Meet… Dora Batty
The creator behind dozens of enduring 1920s Transport of London posters inspired countless of designers, including Terence Conran
Terence Conran said she was “a wonderful lady” to whom he owed “an awful lot” but apart from his kind words and the huge amount of work created by her over the course of four decades, very little is known about the graphic designer Dora Batty. And this fact makes her a compelling and perfect first subject of this new series. Culture Stories aims to highlight the stories of remarkable achievements in the arts by people who are in danger of being forgotten.
When I first thought of this idea I decided to find notable subjects born in Colchester, UK, not far from where I live. Dora Batty’s story immediately struck me as one I wanted to explore; a woman starting her career in the 1920s and rising to the top of her field over the course of several decades sounded to me like a strong and unusual character for her time.
Born on 12th January 1891 in Colchester, Dora Margaret Batty attended the Chelmsford School of Science and Art, where she won several awards in art. We know that she trained in various design fields, as far-ranging as textiles, ceramics, book illustration and advertising. Batty would use her training to work in all of these fields throughout her career.
But it’s the Underground posters that she designed throughout the 1920s and ‘30s that Batty would become best known, producing over 60 of these in her lifetime. In many ways, Batty entered the design profession at a fortunate time. Frank Pick, managing director of the London Underground in the 1920s believed in hiring both men and women for poster design; quite a novel idea, since graphic design wasn’t considered a job done by women at the time. As a result, Transport for London served as a springboard for countless female designers.
David Bownes, curator for a 2017 exhibition called Poster Girls at the London Transport Museum told fastcompany.com at the time that for him “Dora Batty is the greatest of all the designers [in the show] … If you look at [her 1925 ‘From country to the heart of town in 30 minutes’ design], that poster has got all the elements of a modern British poster from the mid 1920s: simplified colours, simplified spaces, and you see the understanding of textiles in the clothes the woman is wearing. It’s spot on in the message the underground was encouraging, which was off-peak ridership. It was elegant, well observed, and appealed to a new female audience. Previously a lot of posters are designed to be looked at by men. This one shows a young, independent woman travelling to the city for her own pleasure or enjoyment. She’s not defined by her children or her husband.”
By all accounts the 1920s and 1930s were a progressive and exciting time for women, who were now more likely than ever before to take advantage of the opportunity to become more financially independent.
The Gloucester Citizen reported on Wednesday 16th January 1935, that “greater numbers [of women] are now resorting to [art school] for professional and commercial reasons. Women, indeed, make quite a brave show in the British Art in Industry Exhibition at Burlington House [London] … and nearly 230 of the exhibits are the acknowledged work of women. Women artists are also employed in many of the art studios of commercial firms, where they work anonymously.” The article then goes on to make a special mention of Batty for her ceramic nursery sets, and a poster titled ‘The Royal Wedding.’
Batty’s versatility meant that she was regularly commissioned by various prestigious companies throughout her career, creating designs for the likes of the BBC, Poole Pottery, and Curwen Press, to name but a few. From 1932 Batty taught textile design at the Central School of Arts & Crafts (now Central Saint Martins), becoming Head of Textiles in 1950 until 58. The UAL website states that Batty’s “innovative teaching methods attracted a number of well-known designers to the staff.”
When Terence Conran joined Batty’s course in the late 1940s at the age of 17, he described her as someone who was “very strict but … ran the course superbly. She saw that her students really had something to do at every moment they were there.” Conran especially enjoyed the “fascinating … twice-a-week, behind the scenes visit to the historic textiles collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum” that Batty arranged for her students.
By this time, the number of women designing posters was dropping again. In 2017 Bownes told dezeen.com that “men were paid significantly more and had much higher profiles. They did more self-promotion than women and did not have the pressure or constraints of family life.” Indeed, Bownes told designweek.com that Batty is “so obscure now that we couldn’t even find a photo of her.”
Although we know so little of Batty’s personal life, I did find out that she lived in Heybridge Basin, near Maldon for the last 30 or so years of her life. A picturesque Essex village located between Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation canal, and the Blackwater estuary, it would have been a serene spot to unwind from the pressure of working in London. Batty named her cottage Starlings, a name she also gave to one of her folk-style textile designs; whether this was an intentional link, we’ll never know, but it’s one of the many clues to Batty’s life as a designer that continue to exist today.
While her name hasn’t quite achieved household status, many of Batty’s designs are still popular to this day; some are sold not only as vintage-chic posters but also in the form of puzzles, tea towels and more. A Christie’s travel posters sale in 2010 saw one of Batty’s 1933 designs fetch £1,375, proving that quality design can continue to mesmerise and inspire for decades to come.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the history of London transport posters, check out the London Transport Museum website, containing an extensive archive of designs.
Thanks for reading the first issue of Culture Stories! Are there any forgotten figures you’d like to see featured next? Let me know in the Comments section below. I’d love to know.