The Binks book / written and illustrated by Ruth Dorrien Knight.
Pennyman, Ruth
Category
Books
Date
1921
Materials
Place of origin
London
Collection
Ormesby Hall, Redcar and Cleveland
NT 3224839
Caption
Ruth Pennyman (née Knight) is still remembered in Teesside for her socialism and work in regional theatre. However, despite the many designs she created for her dramatic productions, including backdrops, costumes and publicity posters, her visual artwork and designs (examples of which are at Ormesby Hall, North Yorkshire) have been largely forgotten. At a time when half the students at art college were women, Pennyman entered St John’s Wood Art School in 1914. Her studies were interrupted by her time as a nurse during the First World War and were not completed until 1921. Living in Chelsea, she met many other artists and found work illustrating books for The Chelsea Publishing Company. She provided illustrations for nursery rhymes and children’s books, including her own story The Binks Book, which recounts the adventures of a boy called Binks, who lives with his artist father in Chelsea. Many of Pennyman’s early drawings suggest that she was influenced by illustrators such as Walter Crane and the Arts and Crafts movement’s fascination with medieval art, but comparisons can also be made with contemporary groups of artists in the 1920s, such as those in Bloomsbury and Camden. By the time Ruth married James Beaumont Worsley Pennyman (1883–1961) in 1926, she seems to have stopped working as an illustrator. The owner of The Chelsea Publishing Company, Edith Place, visited Ormesby Hall only once, in 1927 – perhaps to encourage Pennyman to continue providing illustrations for her, but it was not to be. Pennyman continued to sketch privately and as part of the Cleveland Sketching Club for most of her life, but does not seem to have sold any work after this. Her influence can be seen in the establishment of Boosbeck Industries, a furniture business the Pennymans set up to alleviate the suffering of out-of-work miners in Cleveland in the 1930s.
Summary
Bibliographic description
63, [1]p., plates : col. ill. ; 19 x 25cm (oblong 8vo). Provenance: flyleaf inscribed "Jim from Ruth Oc: 20th 1925" [i.e. James Beaumont Worsley Pennyman (1883-1961) from Ruth Pennyman (1893-1993), née Knight]. Binding: quarter black cloth, with pictorial cream paper boards. (Board broken upper cover lower corner.)
Makers and roles
Pennyman, Ruth
References
Conroy, Rachel, Women Artists and Designers at the National Trust, 2025, pp. 186-7