Omega Workshops

The Workshops located at 33 Fitzroy Square were founded in 1913 by Roger Fry with the help of Bloomsbury Group members Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and financial assistance from George Bernard Shaw. They were inspired by the William Morris movement and their aim was twofold: to introduce into the applied arts a Post-Impressionistic approach to design and colour and to provide a source of part-time work for impoverished artists. Wyndham Lewis was among the founder members, but he soon fell out with Roger Fry over a commission for the Daily Mail Ideal Homes Exhibition and left the group, along with Frederick Etchells, Cuthbert Hamilton and Edward Wadsworth, to set up the Rebel Art Centre in opposition and competition.

French painter Henri Doucet (1883-1915), Winifred Gill, Nina Hamnett, Dora Carrington, Gaudier-Brzeska, Paul Nash and David Bomberg were among other artists involved at various times with the Workshops. Its products, which ranged from painted furniture to bead necklaces, were sold anonymously and artists worked a maximum of three-and-a-half days a week. The onset of war in 1914 brought disruption, however, with the group dispersed and sales reduced. By 1916 many of the artists were involved in the fighting, whilst Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, a conscientious objector, had moved to Charleston Farmhouse near Lewes in Sussex. Although the Workshops managed to survive the war, mounting financial problems eventually forced their closure in June 1919.