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22 I Grosvenor School of Modern Art essential component in making linocuts and gives them their vivid, luminous colours – resulting from the fact that the inks dried on the surface of the paper rather than being absorbed into it. Every impression is slightly different because each was printed entirely by hand, without the aid of a printing press. Each impression is characterised by its own unique qualities and individual beauties rather than by the uniformity of a lithograph or etching. Sometimes colours of images within the same edition differed, and often the prints are wonderfully variegated in feel because the artist explored different intensities of pressure in transferring ink to the paper. Initially, designs were made on tracing paper, which were then lightly oiled and made to adhere to the lino block. Pressure was applied to the design with a blunt- edged instrument, so transferring the design to the lino itself, thereby indicating the area on the block to be cut away. Sybil Andrews, who emigrated to Canada in 1947, completed many of her editions there, where they were printed on different papers to the thin oriental ones she bought from T.N. Lawrence's near Fleet Street in London. The editions were printed more or less as required for exhibitions in the UK and abroad. For example, having secured a show in Melbourne, Ethel Spowers would write to Flight, who, in turn, would inform the rest of the group. Its members would then continue to produce prints from the declared edition of 50 or 60. In the mid- 1930s, some of the artists began making second editions for the American market, that is, when the first proved particularly successful; such prints would be appropriately inscribed – for instance, '1/50 USA'. Previously in 1912, Flight had enrolled at the progressive Heatherley's School of Fine Art in St John's Wood, where C.R.W. Nevinson was a contemporary. Whilst absorbing the nature of Futurist imagery, Flight discarded the movement's extreme political ideas, instead cultivating his own highly personal, yet still innovative and avant-garde, version of modernism. He strongly believed in the linocut as an egalitarian medium, an art for everyone, jettisoning The Grosvenor School of Modern Art opened in 1925 at 33 Warwick Way, just behind London's Victoria Station. The school was very informal and there was no requirement of the equivalent of our current exam needs to enter art school. If a student wanted to attend classes, a carnet of tickets was bought and presented on arrival. The Principal was the wood engraver Iain MacNab; Cyril Power lectured on The Form and Structure of Buildings, Historical Ornament and Symbolism and The Outline of Architectural Style and 24-year-old Sybil Andrews was the School Secretary. Claude Flight taught his technique of linocut printing, gathering together a remarkable coterie of students that included Power and Andrews, William Greengrass, Lill Tschudi and Edith Lawrence. Also amongst Flight's students were the Australians Ethel Spowers, Eveline Syme and Dorrit Black; all three later played a prominent part in organising exhibitions in Australia of Grosvenor School prints. Linoleum is a mixture of ground cork, linseed oil and rosin, a resin compound, on a canvas backing. It was used as flooring but was adopted by artists as a printmaking medium. In other printmaking mediums a key-plate is used for the main structure of the composition with further detail or colour added by successive plates or blocks. Flight's method differed in that he virtually abandoned the key plate, telling his students, 'A key block is not essential; two, three or four blocks of almost equal detail can be used and strength obtained where necessary by superimposing one colour over another to gain the required depth of tone.' This method allowed the image to be gradually built up; with careful planning and inking, several colours, not just one from each block, could be created. The order of printing the blocks determined the colours of the final impression, with, for example, 'red over blue over yellow giving a different result to blue over red over yellow or yellow over blue over red, and so forth'. Flight also recommended using thin, translucent Japanese tissue paper on which printing inks (and in some cases a thinned oil paint) could be applied. This became an GROSVENOR SCHOOL OF MODERN ART