From Camouflage to Coventry: The Art of Steven Sykes

A magician, a zoologist, an ornithologist, a stained glass designer, a cartoonist, architects and surrealist painters might seem like unlikely contributors to the war effort, but members of all these occupations formed part of the British Camouflage Unit during the Second World War.

After training in Farnham Castle, Surrey, among lush country landscapes, their diverse skills and perspectives met a new challenge in the dry, sandy deserts of the Middle East and northern Africa. Here, art, design and technology found new and innovative applications as part of a campaign to deceive and mislead the enemy through camouflage. Camouflage was used to disrupt the landscape and confuse the enemy’s viewpoints, aiming to divert aerial bombing campaigns from their intended targets. Far from the familiar greens of the English countryside which had been their canvas for experimentation, the Camouflage Unit had to work with the colours and materials of the local landscapes. They improvised paints and pigments and reappropriated salvaged materials to turn the desert into something akin to a stage set comprised of false, but realistic, targets. Among the camoufleurs, as they were known, was Royal College of Art-trained stained glass designer Steven Sykes, whose achievements included creating a dummy railroad and camouflaging snipers in the D-Day landings.

Post-war, several of the camoufleurs went on to make significant contributions to British culture and played an important part in creating new visual landscapes as the country was reconstructed for peace-time. The surrealist painter and pacifist Roland Penrose, who trained camoufleurs at Farnham, co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1947. Hugh Casson became Director of Architecture for the 1951 Festival of Britain, to which several of his fellow camoufleurs contributed, including large-scale restaurant murals by painter and print-maker Julian Trevelyan and pots and relief tiles by Steven Sykes. Both Sykes and Trevelyan were also regular contributors to the Pictures for Schools scheme, which aimed to introduce affordable original artworks into schools; Sykes’ 1948 drawing of a watchful cat surveying a nest of timid owls proved particularly popular.

Perhaps the most enduring symbol of post-war reconstruction is the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral designed by another camoufleur, architect Basil Spence. Spence’s cathedral, which began construction in 1955 and was consecrated in 1962, stands next to the exposed ruins of the city’s bombed Cathedral of St Michael. Coventry suffered heavily during the war, and the new cathedral sits atop a small hill leading up from a city centre which had to be built entirely anew. The cathedral manages the rare feat of feeling vast and imposing, yet somehow human in its scale. Part of this is effect is achieved by the incorporation of artworks and design details by leading British designers, from Graham Sutherland’s huge altar tapestry to abstract stained glass by John Piper. Another of the artists who was invited to contribute to the building was Steven Sykes, who created the glittering Gethsemane Chapel that is the jewel in the cathedral’s otherwise somewhat austere and muted crown.

Sykes had undertaken a travelling scholarship in France and Italy as part of his studies, and worked in a range of media including stained glass, mosaic, ceramics and sculpture. After the war, he began to work in pottery, and among his work from this time is a 1950 glazed earthenware dish depicting a leggy trumpet-playing angel. His Gethsemane Chapel, created from 1959 to 1960, incorporates traditional techniques such as mosaic and tesserae, covered in gold leaf, alongside experimental techniques and materials, such as cast concrete and moulded ciment fondu, to glowing and luminous effect. Framed by a large iron crown of thorns designed by Spence, an angel holds out a cup to a suffering Jesus, awaiting betrayal as his disciples sleep amid the olive groves. Unlike the stark, skeletal, almost mummy-like angels of John Hutton at the cathedral entrance, etched in glass, Sykes’ stylised angel is Byzantine meets pop art. His larger-than-life vision seems to have been sent not so much from heaven as from the sun.

Sykes’ radiant style also found expression in another commission of the period at New Century House, a glass-clad tower built as the headquarters of the Manchester-based Co-operative. Completed in 1963, New Century Hall is a large first-floor ballroom complete with sprung dancefloor where discos and Northern Soul nights became an important point of the city’s musical memory. Either side of the stage, on which stars including Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry played, are two large sculptural panels of sculptured reinforced polyester with reflective glass inserts that catch the light from rows of lamps and panels in the ceiling. Depicting minstrels playing the harp, fiddle and triangle, dressed in long, flowing robes and hats which extend outwards like sun-rays, they provide a secular and joyful counterpart to the commemorative mood of Coventry Cathedral.

Sykes continued to experiment with materials and techniques, and to incorporate found and reinterpreted objects. He encouraged others to do the same, and from 1967 put this into practice in the garden he created in the grounds of his home in Midhurst, Sussex. Fay Stevens, who was taught surface design by Sykes at Chelsea School of Art in the late-1970s, fondly recalls his inventive approach to design on her blog, as exemplified by his swimming pool:

“Hand-made of course, tiled in ceramics, also hand-made, of course, but what attracted me was his design solution for heating the water. He had cut the bottoms off wine bottles and threaded them closely on to a hose, then wound the whole into a huge bee-hive looking structure, solar heating long before I ever hear the expression or saw the concept. And this, I think, helps to explain what made him a genius tutor.”

Steven Sykes put some eccentricity and sparkle into the often grey, stripped-back and functional architecture of the post-war period. In an obituary in The Independent newspaper following his death in 1999. Tanya Harrod described him as: “A charming sun-worshipper from some ancient lost culture who had taken up unexpected resident in a fold of the South Downs.”

From Camouflage to Coventry: The Art of Steven Sykes

A magician, a zoologist, an ornithologist, a stained glass designer, a cartoonist, architects and surrealist painters might seem like unlikely contributors to the war effort, but members of all these occupations formed part of the British Camouflage Unit during the Second World War.

After training in Farnham Castle, Surrey, among lush country landscapes, their diverse skills and perspectives met a new challenge in the dry, sandy deserts of the Middle East and northern Africa. Here, art, design and technology found new and innovative applications as part of a campaign to deceive and mislead the enemy through camouflage. Camouflage was used to disrupt the landscape and confuse the enemy’s viewpoints, aiming to divert aerial bombing campaigns from their intended targets. Far from the familiar greens of the English countryside which had been their canvas for experimentation, the Camouflage Unit had to work with the colours and materials of the local landscapes. They improvised paints and pigments and reappropriated salvaged materials to turn the desert into something akin to a stage set comprised of false, but realistic, targets. Among the camoufleurs, as they were known, was Royal College of Art-trained stained glass designer Steven Sykes, whose achievements included creating a dummy railroad and camouflaging snipers in the D-Day landings.

Post-war, several of the camoufleurs went on to make significant contributions to British culture and played an important part in creating new visual landscapes as the country was reconstructed for peace-time. The surrealist painter and pacifist Roland Penrose, who trained camoufleurs at Farnham, co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1947. Hugh Casson became Director of Architecture for the 1951 Festival of Britain, to which several of his fellow camoufleurs contributed, including large-scale restaurant murals by painter and print-maker Julian Trevelyan and pots and relief tiles by Steven Sykes. Both Sykes and Trevelyan were also regular contributors to the Pictures for Schools scheme, which aimed to introduce affordable original artworks into schools; Sykes’ 1948 drawing of a watchful cat surveying a nest of timid owls proved particularly popular.

Perhaps the most enduring symbol of post-war reconstruction is the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral designed by another camoufleur, architect Basil Spence. Spence’s cathedral, which began construction in 1955 and was consecrated in 1962, stands next to the exposed ruins of the city’s bombed Cathedral of St Michael. Coventry suffered heavily during the war, and the new cathedral sits atop a small hill leading up from a city centre which had to be built entirely anew. The cathedral manages the rare feat of feeling vast and imposing, yet somehow human in its scale. Part of this is effect is achieved by the incorporation of artworks and design details by leading British designers, from Graham Sutherland’s huge altar tapestry to abstract stained glass by John Piper. Another of the artists who was invited to contribute to the building was Steven Sykes, who created the glittering Gethsemane Chapel that is the jewel in the cathedral’s otherwise somewhat austere and muted crown.

Sykes had undertaken a travelling scholarship in France and Italy as part of his studies, and worked in a range of media including stained glass, mosaic, ceramics and sculpture. After the war, he began to work in pottery, and among his work from this time is a 1950 glazed earthenware dish depicting a leggy trumpet-playing angel. His Gethsemane Chapel, created from 1959 to 1960, incorporates traditional techniques such as mosaic and tesserae, covered in gold leaf, alongside experimental techniques and materials, such as cast concrete and moulded ciment fondu, to glowing and luminous effect. Framed by a large iron crown of thorns designed by Spence, an angel holds out a cup to a suffering Jesus, awaiting betrayal as his disciples sleep amid the olive groves. Unlike the stark, skeletal, almost mummy-like angels of John Hutton at the cathedral entrance, etched in glass, Sykes’ stylised angel is Byzantine meets pop art. His larger-than-life vision seems to have been sent not so much from heaven as from the sun.

Sykes’ radiant style also found expression in another commission of the period at New Century House, a glass-clad tower built as the headquarters of the Manchester-based Co-operative. Completed in 1963, New Century Hall is a large first-floor ballroom complete with sprung dancefloor where discos and Northern Soul nights became an important point of the city’s musical memory. Either side of the stage, on which stars including Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry played, are two large sculptural panels of sculptured reinforced polyester with reflective glass inserts that catch the light from rows of lamps and panels in the ceiling. Depicting minstrels playing the harp, fiddle and triangle, dressed in long, flowing robes and hats which extend outwards like sun-rays, they provide a secular and joyful counterpart to the commemorative mood of Coventry Cathedral.

Sykes continued to experiment with materials and techniques, and to incorporate found and reinterpreted objects. He encouraged others to do the same, and from 1967 put this into practice in the garden he created in the grounds of his home in Midhurst, Sussex. Fay Stevens, who was taught surface design by Sykes at Chelsea School of Art in the late-1970s, fondly recalls his inventive approach to design on her blog, as exemplified by his swimming pool:

“Hand-made of course, tiled in ceramics, also hand-made, of course, but what attracted me was his design solution for heating the water. He had cut the bottoms off wine bottles and threaded them closely on to a hose, then wound the whole into a huge bee-hive looking structure, solar heating long before I ever hear the expression or saw the concept. And this, I think, helps to explain what made him a genius tutor.”

Steven Sykes put some eccentricity and sparkle into the often grey, stripped-back and functional architecture of the post-war period. In an obituary in The Independent newspaper following his death in 1999. Tanya Harrod described him as: “A charming sun-worshipper from some ancient lost culture who had taken up unexpected resident in a fold of the South Downs.”