December 8th 2024 - John and Tom Phillips had huge respect for each other and for their work (as evidenced by the above photograph taken by Heini Schneebeli) and Astrid provided Tom with some of her most exquisite knitworks.
John and Tom first got to know each other well when they both taught students at the Bath Academy of Art. Then, Tom would travel down to Corsham from London and spend that evening and night with the Furnivals at their home at Woodchester near Nailsworth. At that time, Tom Phillips was working on an edition of his Humument (a 'modified' book from the Victorian novel by WH Mallock entitled A Human Document). A fragment of the novel was used by Tom to provide a work of homage to John. Within the image is a reference to John's large umbrella construction (and Dorothy's Umbrellas).
On a personal note, It was thanks to Tom that I got to know John and Astrid. During a visit to Tom's studio in Peckham in the mid-1970s, Tom asked me to confirm whether I lived in Nailsworth (although an academic at the University of Bristol, I had been living in this small Cotswold town for 2 years since marrying the local dental surgeon). I said that I did and Tom followed up by asking me whether or not I knew of John Furnival. I said again that I did as, when a student, I had helped organise an exhibition about Kinetic Poetry at the Student Union that featured John's Devil Trap. "Well, said Tom, don't you know he lives in Nailsworth?" On returning home I contacted an artist friend living in Stroud, Nick Cudworth, and asked him if he was acquainted with John. A week later, Nick invited myself and my wife to dinner with John and Astrid. The meal was accompanied by much laughter and a friendship was cemented!
John was the founder in 1975 of Satie's Faction (in honour of the Franco-Scottish composer Erik Satie) and quite naturally Tom became one of the founder members. To honour Satie, Tom devised another Humument page for this group. Talking of Satie, Tom, John, Astrid and myself went to the opening of a play by Adrian Mitchell, Satie Night/Day. The poster for the play was produced by Tom. We enjoyed the event (and the subsequent evening meal), despite all four of us lamenting the biographical errors concerning Satie.
John and Tom sometimes exhibited together at commercial galleries. The first work I bought of John's was at such an exhibition in 1979 at Thumb Gallery in London (A Miscellany of Work More Recent than the Last Recent Work).
No less important is the collaboration between Tom Phillips and Astrid Furnival. Working together, Tom and Astrid devised the iconography to celebrate the composer, Robert Schumann (Last notes from Endenich). The work appeared as a drawing, a screenprint and a jumper, as well as a piece of music.
Subsequently, Astrid and Tom went on to collaborate on a jumper honouring Dante at a time when Tom was translating and illustrating the Inferno from the Divine Comedy (pattern drawn by John) and two jumpers relating to the places in London where Tom lived.
Alas, the collaboration is o'er as regrettably neither John nor Tom are now with us, but memories and the work remain!
