Smiling at the Storm 

In this, the first book devoted to the subject, Peter Tolhurst poses the question ‘What is Folk Art?’ He concludes that, indifferent to the winds of fashion, it is the artistic intent, the decorative effect, that distinguishes an object from the purely functional. Using what materials were to hand, creativity of this kind was often the preserve of anonymous artists – stonemasons, gansey knitters, blacksmiths and thatchers – working in a long established tradition.

Long periods of enforced isolation produced some of the most remarkable pieces of folk art to come out of East Anglia – the huge panoramic wool pictures worked on by John Craske during his last bedridden years and Lorina Bulwer’s disturbingly original protest letters stitched in the Yarmouth workhouse. Napoleonic POWs near Peterborough were encouraged to produce delicate bone toys and straw marquetry boxes for sale at the prison gates.

French prisoners were not the only foreign contributors to the region’s folk art. Italian painters applied the decorative finish to many of the fairground rides made famous by Savage’s of Lynn. The wall art inspired by Hollywood cartoon characters can still be found on old American airbases and two of the ships’ figureheads washed up on the Suffolk coast were carved in Calcutta.

Whereas the Staffordshire figurines commemorating two notorious Victorian murders are rare examples of mass produced folk art, applied arts like pargeting, the making of corn dollies and flush flintwork are intrinsic to the region. Equally recognisable are Sheringham ganseys, Norwich trade signs, gypsy vans from the fens and the painted pub signs still used by Adnams.

Smiling at the Storm is a celebration of East Anglia’s rich folk art tradition, a tribute to the craftsmen and women who have created it and to the museums that have saved much of what remains.