Michael O'Connell

1898-1976

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O'Connell and Ella returned to England after 17 years in Australia, for the coronation of George VI in May 1937, with a collection of patriotically themed linens they hoped to sell.  They moved to Perry Green, Hertfordshire, next to sculptor Henry Moore, to a modernist house The Chase, which Michael designed and built.

The couple continued to produce printed textiles identified as Mael Fabrics, a combination of thier names, in recognition of Ella's contribution. O'Connell exhibited at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society held in Burlington House, Piccadilly, London and the Ideal Home exhibition. Harrods and Alastair Morton of Edinburgh Weavers commissioned furnishing designs as did Heals who also exhibited his work.

The outbreak of the WW2 in September 1939 prevented the O'Connells returning to Australia. Now 40, O'Connell volunteered for service and joined the 52nd Coast Regiment of the Royal Artillery stationed at Dover. Ella adapted their five-acre grounds to a smallholding. By 1943 she was pregnant with their son Terence. After the war Ella worked during the week at Heals. O'Connell continued printing with a series of assistants and also taught art at Ware College, Hertfordshire.  The couple seperated in 1950, relations having been strained for some years.

In 1946 O'Connell's textiles were included in the Britain Can Make It exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Fabrics were in short supply after the war so O'Connell used jute and the backing for his wall hangings or "painted tapestries". He worked on commission and for exhibitions, but also produced hangings for factory canteens, which could be hired. For the Festival of Brtain in 1951 he designed a huge hanging for the Country Pavillion Variety of British Farming.

Commissions followed from Ashley Havinden and an East Anglian television appearance, where he demonstrated the resist-dyeing tchnique. O'Connell continued to design for Heals throughout the 1950s, which he found a welcome change from the historical designs generally requested for other projects. A trip to South Africa inspired primitive designs from Polynesia, Africa and Australia.

O'Connell produced a huge number of hangings in the late 1950s and 1960s,  particularly on religious thrmes, which were exhibited in London, Italy, Holland and Switerland. Appliqué was another medium in which he experimented at this time. In the 1960s he used a traditional Javanese tjanting pen to produce batik wax. Hot wax is held in the pen's resevoir which is then used to draw on the fabric. He also found at this time there was interest in resist-painting. In 1961 O'Connell produced Script-Design, a publication outlining the theory of design in the medium of resist-painting. He compared examples of his technique with historical examples in the V & A.

The 1970s saw an exhibition of his Mikado costume designs at Leighton House Museum, London. In the same year O'Connell's wooden studio at Perry Green burned down, destroying thirty or forty years of diaries, leaving him devastated. Despite failing eyesight, more hangings were produced but in December 1976 after a car accident, he returned home and shot himself.