Trustees


Stanley Jones MBE 1933 - 2023

Life President until 2023

Stanley Jones early training was at Wigan School of Art and from there he went to Slade School of Fine Art in London. Following his Studies in London, he moved to Paris to work at the Ecole de Beaux Arts for a time before moving to the Atelier Patris, Montparnasse in Paris where he gained much experience in stone and zinc plate lithography and was also fortunate enough to work with artists like Giacometti, Le Moal, Sugali, Severini and Soulages.

In 1958 Robert Erskine persuaded Stanley to return to London to help set up the Curwen Studio and create an environment in which artists had the freedom to work in printmaking. At the same time he took up a post at the Slade School to lecture in lithography. It was a perfect combination enabling him to work with artists, students and to produce his own work.

Stanley devoted his life to the execution and promotion of printmaking. Not only did he guide such famous sculptors as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth into the two dimensional world of graphic image making, but also, in later years, introduced generations of art students to the magic of letting their imaginations roam freely on paper at the Curwen Print Study Centre.

In 2000 Stanley Jones and Sam Alper opened the Curwen Print Study Centre, at Chilford Hall, as a non-profit Trust under the Directorship of Lorraine Chitson which would focus on teaching Fine Art Printmaking. Both were (sadly Alper died in 2002) extremely passionate about protecting the future of traditional skills in a digital age. Stanley was Life President of The Curwen Print Study Centre until 2023.

Despite his busy life either working or teaching in the Study Centre he found the time to pursue his own career as an artist. Stanley used lithography and painting and had one-man shows as well as participating in mixed exhibitions in the UK and abroad. His work is in private and public collections throughout the world.

David Morley

Chair of Trustees

David qualified as a Chartered Accountant and spent 7 years with KPMG’s audit practice in London and Nassau, Bahamas before moving into finance and investment. For the last 22 years he has worked for 3 global investment management businesses in a variety of roles covering risk management and business development, travelling extensively across Europe, the Middle East and North America.

Away from work David has a keen interest in the arts, and an introduction to Curwen by a mutual acquaintance of David Borrington led to him joining the Board of Trustees in 2018. He hopes that his experience and contacts in finance and business development will be of benefit to the Study Centre as it plans for an exciting next stage of its development.

David Borrington

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2008, Borrington co-founded the Dekkle Fine Art Print Studio in Baldock, Hertfordshire, with his wife Louisa.

He specialises in Etching and drawing, and has been appointed honourable artist at King's College London, as well as the honourable artist of the Lawful Government of Hawaii. Borrington's keen interest in education and conserving traditional techniques, underpins his practice.

He was introduced to Curwen by John Mills in the spring of 2016, where he hopes to bring many new ideas to the Study Centre.

Anita Abram

Since initially graduating as an illustrator in 1992, Anita has worked predominantly in the field of early education and childcare with roles spanning both the public and voluntary sectors. Anita has been a manager for over 20 years in various local government positions, and her specialties include information development, marketing and quality improvement. Anita also works as an accredited trades union representative supporting employees in her workplace, and as a result has a sound understanding of employment issues.

Anita’s other interests include illustration, horse riding and she’s also a member of a local band.

Susan Aldworth

Susan is a contemporary artist whose work investigates the relationship between mind and body. Her experimental work in print, time-based media and installation includes the Transience etchings printed directly from human brain tissue, and the Reassembling the Self suite of lithographs which she printed with Stanley Jones at the Curwen Studio. Her work is held in many public and private collections including V&A, British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum and Wellcome Collection. She has exhibited widely including Susan Aldworth: The Portrait Anatomised at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Realisation at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and most recently Illuminating the Self at Hatton Gallery and Vane in Newcastle. Susan is an associate lecturer on the MA Art & Science at Central Saint Martin’s and is a regular presenter on BBC Radio. She is represented by TAG Fine Art.

Susan was the last artist to work with Stanley at the Curwen Studio before he retired. They made the stone lithography suite called CODE together.

John Rhodes

John Rhodes studied law at Jesus College Cambridge before qualifying as a Solicitor at City firm Macfarlanes, where for 40 years until 2008 he specialised in estate and succession planning for UK and international families. On retiring from Macfarlanes he continued for the next 12 years to practice in much the same areas with the Multi Family Office now known as Stonehage Fleming, from which he has now also retired.

Throughout his career John has advised on trust, philanthropy and charity issues, as well as acting as trustee of a number of family and charitable trusts. Although he makes no claim to expertise in the arts he is impressed with what has been achieved at the Curwen Print Study Centre and hopes his experience of working with other charities will be of assistance to the Curwen Board.

In his second round of retirement John continues to support charities with which he has been associated and pursues his other main interests of beekeeping and the maintenance of some ancient woodland adjoining his home near Saffron Walden.

Simon Redman RIBA

Simon is a local, Chartered Architect. His award winning practice, Cowper Griffith Architects, specialises in arts, community and public projects, typically those involving works in and around heritage assets.

He attended a printmaking course at CPSC in 2019 and was struck by the organisation’s pedigree, sense of history and mission.

The planned move to Thurlow created an opportunity for Simon to join the Board of Trustees, to bring his specifically relevant experience to the table. He is delighted to be involved at this critical juncture in the Centre’s timeline and anticipates a happy and successful future in rural Suffolk.

Honorary Fellows


Chloe Cheese RCA MA

Chloe was introduced to the Curwen Studio on Edward Bawden's recommendation after leaving the Royal College of Art in the late 1970s and thereafter made a number of commissioned prints at their London studio.

Coincidentally Chloe had originally attended art school in Cambridge and her mother had lived in Saffron Walden not far from Chilford Hall. Chloe's mother Sheila Robinson was a very skilled printmaker and Chloe shows the cardboard cutting techniques and prints made by her mother to others so that these working methods can be more widely practiced and preserved.

Chloe works as an artist, printmaker and illustrator and although she concentrates mainly on her own work has taught part time since leaving the RCA - from BA Illustration students in Beirut to painting weekends on the Kent coast, schoolchildren, community art groups and most recently MA Illustration students at Camberwell Art School in London. She relates to the work of others by using her own practical experience as a starting point.

John Mills ARCA PPRBS FRSA

Until his death on 24 October 2023

There is a definite empathy between sculpture and printmaking that may not be obvious, because it focuses in the materials and processes of both disciplines as well as the fundamental importance of drawing. Metal working tools equipment and chemicals are common to both sculpture and printmaking and their mastery enables the transition from one to the other fairly painlessly. It should be remembered however that the image dictates the handling of materials not the other way round and good drawing is fundamental to both.

The work of John Mills illustrates this compatibility detectable in his long career using both disciplines. The work he has produced over the years starts at junior art school, advancing to senior art school, both at Hammersmith and then progressing to The Royal College of Art Sculpture Dept. a total of twelve years. Junior art school for three years was a solid introduction to many disciplines including Printmaking and Sculpture providing a strong basis for the practise and understand of craft relative to expression. His work ever since those days has included images of people he admires, both living heroes and others from art and history, he like the frisson of trying to make ‘art from art’ that this allows. Sport and dance feature prominently in his life and therefore in his work and he continues to find excitement depicting the physical beauty of the human figure in action and repose, accepting the challenge of trying to make a powerful statement using a beautiful subject. He sometimes makes a brief lapse to make a brutal image that permits the pleasure of free gestural modelling in both disciplines. The graphic power of lithography and etching with their comparative speed of production and thought, encompasses the pleasure. The beauty that is powerful and power that is beautiful interests Mills more than simple reproduction imitating life with little or no interpretation and is an important aspect of his sculpture, printmaking and drawing.