Relative Ties: The Women Artists of the Nicholson Family
This spring, The Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College invites us into a world where ribbons curl, unicorns prance across linen, and domestic interiors pulse with wit and resolve. Relative Ties: Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed (6 March–6 September 2026) unfolds as a richly layered study of artistic inheritance, tracing how ideas, motifs and convictions pass along matrilineal lines—stitched into fabric, pressed into lino blocks, and painted into memory. Spanning over a century, the exhibition gathers paintings, wallpaper, textiles, rugs and works on paper (many never before publicly displayed) to reveal a lineage of women who made creativity both a vocation and a way of life.
Nancy as the Harlequin with a Windsor Chair, Mabel Nicholson (1871–1918). Image: National Galleries of Scotland
The story begins with Mabel Pryde Nicholson, whose atmospheric domestic scenes capture her children in tender, theatrical moments. Her portrait of her daughter Nancy dressed as a harlequin opens the exhibition, setting the tone for a family deeply entwined with the London theatre world, where costume and cloth shimmer with possibility. That daughter, Nancy Nicholson, emerges as a formidable presence. In 1929 she founded Poulk Press, producing hand-printed textiles alive with unicorns, ducks and the flora and fauna that surrounded her homes in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.
Nancy Nicholson, Penny Fiddle. © Estate of EQ Nicholson
Fiercely independent (she refused to adopt her husband Robert Graves’s surname) Nancy resisted the mass production of her designs, believing the integrity of the handmade must be preserved. On display are her original lino blocks, stencils and tools, alongside bespoke letterheads created for her brother Ben Nicholson and for Barbara Hepworth. Particularly poignant is Auntie’s Skirts, The End (1918), a rare painting that signals how seldom her fine art was exhibited during her lifetime.
EQ Nicholson, Black Goose reprinted in 1988 from a 1938 lino block © Estate of EQ Nicholson
In 1945 Nancy opened a Belgravia shop with her sister-in-law EQ Nicholson, a designer shaped by an equally illustrious female lineage. Trained briefly in Paris, EQ created textiles later reproduced by Edinburgh Weavers and others, yet her process remained rooted in meticulous drawing and hand-painting. Her Runner Bean wallpaper, selected by Hugh Casson for the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1950, exemplifies her ability to balance the handmade with mechanical production. Wartime shifts towards collage and botanical painting reveal an introspective but no less assured sensibility. Also among her designs is the distinctive ‘Black Goose’, which Selvedge print subscribers may recognise from the wrapper of Issue 125, Mediterranean.
Louisa Creed, Hunting Cat (2004)
The thread continues with rag rugs by Louisa Creed, whose richly hued works embody thirty years of dedicated handcraft. Creed’s Hunting Cat (2004), donated to the Collection alongside EQ’s collage Jugs and Quinces (1946), anchors this intergenerational dialogue. Equally, a new commission by Katie Schwab—a sculptural mobile, ribbon-inspired tea towel and porcelain wall-based work—extends the conversation. Ribbons, a recurring motif in Nancy’s designs, become both material and metaphor: binding mothers to daughters, and memory to making.
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Further Information:
Relative Ties: Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed is on show from 6 March–6 September 2026, at The Women’s Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.
Curated by Harriet Loffler, Relative Ties celebrates women’s work, creative inheritance and the enduring eloquence of cloth. The exhibition travels to York Art Gallery in 2027.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Nancy Nicholson, Begonia, 1950. Cushion cover hand printed with stencils and perforated zinc © Estate of Nancy Nicholson.
All further images as credited in photo captions.