MARIAN FIELDING PECK

Marian Fielding Peck - always known as Maisie - grew up in Chesterfield, the second daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Peck.  Her father was Medical Officer of Health for Chesterfield and a barrister of Lincoln's Inn.

Like her sisters, she was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, and she attributed much of her later artistic success to the excellent art teaching she received there.

On leaving school during the First World War, she joined the Women's Land Army and was a group leader.  She started painting seriously during the 1920s and 30s, in varied styles from Art Deco to miniatures, watercolours and pen-and-ink, a favourite medium.  She also drew the first of her many maps but most of her early commissions were for her calligraphy - examples of which can still be seen in the List of Rectors and the War Memorial names in Smallburgh Church.  It was during this time, too, that she began to exhibit miniatures at the Royal Academy.

Riding was always a lifelong pleasure, and she hunted regularly with the Barlow Hunt, so it was not surprising that the subjects for several of these miniatures were horses.  She was also a Pony Club instructor and examiner.

While living in Derbyshire, Maisie was County Treasurer of the Girl Guides, and, as a friend of Lady Baden-Powell, she was asked to do the pen-and-ink drawings for her biography, and also the Derbyshire Guides loyal address to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their coronation. 

As a member of the Ashover W.I., the Derbyshire Women's Institute commissioned pen-and-ink drawings for their calendars and later asked for her to draw the Derbyshire page for the gift book presented to Princess Elizabeth by all the Women's Institutes of England and Wales, on her marriage in 1947.

Gradually, over this period before the Second World War, Maisie was becoming increasingly deaf, and it was perhaps this, that drove her to spend more time on art and embroidery.

In 1939, she moved to Norfolk with her widowed mother and younger sister, to be near her brother, who had bought St Mary's Works at Stalham.  She was to live in the same house at Smallburgh for the rest of her life.

In Norfolk, both she, and her sister Ella, were keen W.I. members, belonging to the Smallburgh, Dilham and District, and Worstead Institutes.  Much of her needlework was exhibited at W.I. Craft shows.  She designed the Norfolk W.I. Jubilee plate, manufactured by Poole Pottery.  Her W.I. Table cover is still used today, as is our altar cloth.  She also illustrated the book "Within Living Memory", produced by the Norfolk Federation of Women's Institutes in 1971.

By the 1950s, she was producing many greetings card designs, often reflecting her great love of nature.  Her sister Ella's greatest friend from schooldays, owned and ran an artists' agency in the Haymarket, and this was the outlet for her work.  In 1953, Salmons asked the agency to suggest an artist to produce map postcards of areas of Great Britain.

Norfolk was the first of 61 cards she produced for them and she was working on a postcard of New Zealand when she was killed in a car crash in Smallburgh in 1974.  Her ashes are buried in the family grave in Smallburgh Churchyard.

Always a staunch churchwoman, there were, running in tandem with the Salmon postcards, the pen-and-ink drawings she did for Norfolk Church postcards and the Parson Woodforde Society, of which she was a founder member.

It says much for the quality of her work, that 35 years after her death, one can still buy many of her Salmon map postcards all over Britain, and not only the cards, but plastic table mats, trays and even jigsaws!

NOTES

Gaps show places where Salmon have ceased to sell cards, e.g. Scotland, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, (and a much weaker coverage of North of England).   I know of at least 30 printings (x4000) of South Devon.

2-47-00-44, 2-48-00-43, 2-52-00-18, 2-57-01-38 and 2-59-00-21 use format of map plus six views.

Other maps of new areas, e.g. Essex, were painted by Phoebe Posner.   Two maps for canals were unsigned (Oxford Canal (1-34-05-07,   2-34-05-07),   Llangollen Canal (1-22-05-11, 2-22-05-11)).
Most continental (150x105) size cards are still in print.   Maps were used until 2000 in Salmon Guide Books, e.g. York.   Maps were also used in "Mini Guides".

Salmon have produced one Isle of Wight map for a local gift shop chain with their name on, and given special number 501 0772.   Similarly for Sussex, 510 1568.

There is one Oversize Bespoke map, Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon (ex 4656) reprinted in Landscape size (165mm x 115mm) numbered 5/10/21/16.   Possibly sponsored by local wholesaler, on sale at Shakespeare Souvenirs, Henley Street.

The last Salmon jigsaws were cardboard (Academy Series) featuring Cornwall, Dorset, Sussex, South Wales.   About a dozen maps e.g. Isle of Wight are on place mats.

Confusion over date of first map could have been caused by the fact that Maisie did two maps of Cornwall!   The complete alignment was changed and new pictures produced, the same number 4558 was used, and the published date of this second map would be about 1960.   I still think the first 3 maps were put on sale about 1954-5; they have different (Type E) backs

Article in S.P.S.G. Newsletter on Salmon alterations to maps.   Photocopy available from Tony Longshaw.