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  • Country Life

    The girl with the golden touch

    Mar 30, 2022 4 minutes

    WHATEVER the painter and fabric designer Althea McNish touched turned to gold—and pink, orange, lime and purple. She was a one-woman colour explosion against the grey conformity of post-war Britain.

    That golden touch was demonstrated only two days after she completed her studies in printed textiles at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) in the 1950s. Existing work was snapped up by Liberty department store, the head of which, Arthur Stewart-Liberty, then packed her off in a taxi to meet ‘The Mad Silkman’, Zika Ascher. A Czech émigré artist, designer and businessman, Ascher was noted for uniting radical art with chic design. He promptly commissioned a scintillating

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