Textile designers and manufacturers Zika (1910 – 1992) and Lida (1913 – 1983) Ascher won international acclaim for their innovative collaborations with fine artists such as Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Henri Matisse.
In their effort to relocate to Britain and rebuild their lives, architects fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe were supported not only by the various refugee organisations active in the country but also by their British colleagues, especially through the activities of the RIBA Refugee Committee and the Architects Refugee Fund.
Designing From Home is a new short documentary film co-directed by Harriet Atkinson and Sue Breakell and produced by Banyak Films, which explores the north London house where influential graphic designer FHK Henrion (1914-1990) lived and worked for over forty years, and features interviews with his four children alongside original archive material from Henrion’s archive at the University of Brighton Design Archives.
Derry city, aka Londonderry, was one of the first places in Northern Ireland to which refugee workers from Vienna came to escape Nazi persecution.
Marian Mahler (1909-1982) was born in Wies, Austria and settled in the UK in 1937. She studied at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) as well as architecture, with Josef Hoffmann, from late 1928 until early 1933.