The Omega Workshops was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group

Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...

 and established in 1913. It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square

Fitzroy Square

Fitzroy Square is one of the Georgian squares in London and is the only one found in the central London area known as in Fitzrovia.The square, nearby Fitzroy Street and the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street have the family name of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, into whose ownership the land...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and was founded with the intention of providing graphic expression to the essence of the Bloomsbury ethos.

Beginnings

In forming the company, critic Roger Fry

Roger Fry

Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...

 aimed to remove what he considered to be the false divisions between the decorative and fine arts

Fine art

Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....

, and to give his artist friends an additional income opportunity in designing furniture, textiles and other household accessories. Fry was keen to encourage a Post-Impressionist

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...

 influence in designs produced for Omega. However, Cubist

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 and Fauvist

Fauvism

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...

 influences are also apparent, particularly in many of the textile designs

Textile design

Textile design is the process of creating designs and structures for knitted, woven, non-woven or embellishments of fabrics.Textile designing involves producing patterns for cloth used in clothing, household textiles and decorative textiles such as carpets. The field encompasses the actual pattern...

.

To ensure items were bought only for the quality of the work, and not the reputation of the artist, Fry insisted works be shown anonymously, marked only with the letter omega

Omega

Omega is the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system, it has a value of 800. The word literally means "great O" , as opposed to omicron, which means "little O"...

. The products were in general expensive, and aimed at an exclusive market.

Designers and Manufacturers

In addition to offering a wide range of individual products, such as painted furniture, painted mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

s, mosaics

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

, stained glass

Stained glass

The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

, and textiles

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

, Omega Workshops Ltd offered interior design

Interior design

Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...

 themes for various living spaces. A commission was taken to decorate a room for the 1913 Ideal Home Exhibition

Ideal Home Show

The Ideal Home Show is an annual event in London, now held at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre. The show was devised by the Daily Mail newspaper in 1908 and continued to be run by the Daily Mail up until 2009...

, and an illustrated catalogue, including text written by Fry, was published in autumn 1914.

Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell

Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...

 and Duncan Grant

Duncan Grant

Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...

 produced designs for Omega, and Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham Lewis

Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...

 was initially part of the operation. Lewis, however, split off at an early stage, taking with him several other participants to start the rival decorative workshop Rebel Art Centre after accusing Fry of misappropriating a commission to decorate a room at the Ideal Home Exhibition in the autumn of 1913. In October 1913, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells

Frederick Etchells

Frederick Etchells was an English artist and architect.- Biography :The early education of Etchells was through William Lethaby at the London School of Kensington, now known as The Royal College of Art, which brought him into contact with the Bloomsbury GroupHe was a contributor to the Omega...

, Edward Wadsworth

Edward Wadsworth

Edward Alexander Wadsworth was an English artist, most famous for his close association with Vorticism. He painted, often in tempera, coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life...

 and Cuthbert Hamilton

Cuthbert Hamilton

Cuthbert Hamilton was a British artist associated with the Vorticist movement and later with Group X. He was one of the pioneers of abstract art in Britain.Cuthbert Hamilton went to the Slade School of Art and was a contemporary of Wyndham Lewis...

 announced their resignation from Omega in a letter, known as the 'Round Robin', to its shareholders and patrons. This letter contained accusations particularly against Fry, criticising the workshop's products and ideology. This split led to the formation not only of the Rebel Art Centre, but also of the Vorticist

Vorticism

Vorticism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was based in London but international in make-up and ambition.-Origins:...

 movement.

Most manufacturing for Omega was outsourced to professional craftsmen, such as J. Kallenborn & Sons of Stanhope Street, London, for marquetry furniture and Dryad Ltd of Leicester for tall cane-seat chairs; a company in France was used to manufacture early printed linens.

In the autumn of 1913 Fry, who also created the designs for Omega's tall cane-seat chairs, started designing and making pottery. After he considered book design and publishing in July 1915, the superintendent of printing at Central School of Arts and Crafts

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...

 collaborated with Omega in designing four books that were later outsourced for printing.

The range of products continued to increase throughout Omega Workshops' six-year existence, and in April 1915 Vanessa Bell began using Omega fabrics in dress design, after which dressmaking became a successful part of the business.

In January 1918, Omega were commissioned to design sets and costumes in the Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill was a British humorist and writer.-Biography:Zangwill was born in London on January 21, 1864 in a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia, to Moses Zangwill from what is now Latvia and Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill from what is now Poland. He dedicated his life to championing...

play Too Much Money.

Closure and Legacy

Omega closed in 1919, and was officially liquidated on 24 July 1920. Media coverage of the workshop had always been mediocre, and it had relied heavily on the patronage of wealthy London society within artistic and literary circles. A series of poor financial decisions and internal conflicts all contributed to its decline. At the time of its closure, Fry was the only remaining original member working regularly at the workshop. Despite this, Omega became influential in interior design in the 1920s.

Edward Wolfe worked at the Omega Workshops, hand-painting candle-shades and trays, and decorating furniture. Wolfe, who died in 1982, was one of the last of the Bloomsbury painters.

A revival of interest in Omega designs in the 1980s led to a reassessment of the place of the Bloomsbury Group in visual arts.