WHILE I WAS STUDYING to become a dentist (in the late 1970s), I used to attend an etching and engraving class in a studio in West Hampstead’s Sumatra Road. The class was supervised by the owner of the studio, my mother’s cousin Dolf Rieser (1898-1983). Like my mother, he was born in South Africa. They were both born in King Williams Town, but he was 23 years older than her.
An engraving by Dolf Rieser
Dolf ‘s childhood memories evoke South Africa as it was at the turn of the century (19th/20th) and are recorded in his unfinished autobiography (dolfrieser.com). Here is an extract that gives a flavour of them:
“The climate of King William’s Town was particularly difficult to bear and my mother suffered greatly especially where her nerves were concerned. I vividly remember her awful attacks of migraine when she had to stay in a darkened room. In the end we decided to leave South Africa, as I shall relate later on . My uncle, my mother’s brother, was at that time living on the border of Basutoland. He was running a small trading post and also kept some horses and sheep. This place was right up on the high plateau and was called Moshes-Ford after the famous Basuto chief, Moshes. My uncle invited us up to him for a holiday and I think we first took a train and then had to continue by horse and carriage, which presumably was also the postal service at the time. I remember well an “ooutspan” for lunch near an immense field full of dried bones and skeletons. These were the remains of the “Rinderpest” which shortly before had nearly wiped out the cattle of South Africa. I played football with a cow or ox skull, very much to the annoyance of the grown-ups. The following night we had to spend at the German Pastor’s home and I remember how impressed I was with the enormous bed and unknown eiderdowns.”
The ’Rinderpest’ was a disease that afflicted cattle.
During his classes at Sumatra Road, he would regale us with stories of Paris in the 1920’s and 1930s, when he was there learning etching an engraving in the studios of both Stanley Hayter and Joseph Hecht. One story that sticks in my mind is how he used to attend the same Parisian café as Pablo Picasso. The great master sat at one table alongside the the other leading artists in Paris, and junior artists like Dolf sat close by at another table.
Dolf was an excellent teacher. He showed us how to etch and engrave. However, what impressed me most is that he had the ability to look at his students’ works in progress, understand what we were trying to achieve, and then provide constructive (rather than prescriptive) advice.
I really miss Dolf, even though it is so many years since he died. He had a wonderful sense of humour, was a wonderful raconteur, and, having once trained as a biologist (before becoming an artist), a wonderfully adventurous approach to his métier.
THE TOWER OF BABEL greeted anyone who climbed the staircase at my childhood home in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Well, actually it was a large engraving of the tower as imagined by Dolf Rieser (1898-1983). Dolf, who was born in King Williams Town in South Africa, was related to my mother’s grandmother Hedwig Ginsberg (née Rieser). My mother and Dolf were cousins. Even though they lived not far from us in north London, I saw little of Dolf and his family until about 1976 when I began studying dentistry. It was then that my uncle Sven, married to my mother’s sister, and his daughter told me that they were about to join the printmaking classes that Dolf held in his studio above his home in Sumatra Road, West Hampstead. As I liked drawing and painting, I signed up as well. The three of us attended the weekly evening classes that Dolf held on Tuesdays. Out of a class of on average six to eight students, three of us and the teacher were all closely related.
At the top of the stairs leading to the studio, there was a small colourful image created by the artist who is now very famous. It was a gift to Dolf given by the artist when both were living in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Dolf, who had studied biology in Switzerland and was awarded a PhD in 1922 (https://dolfrieser.com/), began studying art in Munich in 1923, and then moved to Paris to study print-making in Atelier 17, the studio of the great surrealist painter and etcher Stanley Hayter (1901-1988) and the engraver Jozef Hecht (1891-1951).
In the compulsory half hour tea breaks during the classes, we used to sit with Dolf whilst he regaled us with tales about his life in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. Every winter, he used to go to Switzerland to ski. He used to enter the railway station carrying his wooden skis, and Parisians would stop him to ask what they were. For, in those days, it might surprise you to learn, the average Frenchman was unfamiliar with skiing. Dolf used to visit the Café Les Deux Magots in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris, where he would enjoy the company of other artists. He told us that he often saw Pablo Picasso there, sitting at one of the tables. Dolf said that being a junior and relatively unknown artist at the time, he had to sit at a table near to Picasso’s, which was reserved for the ‘upper echelon’ of the artists community in the city. I cannot recall all that he told us, but much of it was both informative and highly entertaining, if not always entirely suitable for polite company. One bit of French that I learned from him during these entertaining intervals in the class was ‘poule de luxe’, which you can look up for yourself.
Dolf’s lofty studio had several large tables where we worked on our copper and zinc plates. At one end of the studio there was a raised platform, a gallery, on which there was a couch or bed. The tables were surrounded with a great assortment of stuff, both works of art by Dolf and the plethora of materials and equipment need to make prints, not only on paper but also on plastic and silk, techniques he developed. There was a table with large shallow trays containing nitric acid in which plates of zinc prepared for etching were bathed. The acid in the trays was of variable concentration, unknown even to Dolf, who used to periodically chuck in unmeasured dollops of concentrated acid from brown glass Winchester bottles whenever he felt (rather than knowing for sure) it might be necessary. Often, he did not tell us when he was about to strengthen the liquid. This could prove difficult if someone were trying to make small delicate adjustments to his or her zinc plate. Occasionally, one or other of us would shout, dismayed:
“Oh, Dolf, you didn’t say you were adding acid. Now, see: the acid has eaten deeper than I was expecting.”
But the ever-ingenious Dolf usually always had a way of remedying what looked to be disastrous at first sight. Today, I doubt that the studio would have passed health and safety rules. There were no extractor fans above the acid baths to remove the toxic fumes emitted when a plate was in the acid. This did not bother any of us.
One end of the studio near the acid baths was dominated by a large, hand operated printing press. The etched or engraved plate was placed on a soft woollen cloth, after having been inked up. A sheet of damp paper was placed over the plate, and this was covered by another cloth. Then, Dolf or one of us turned the large wheel that drove the plate between a pair of metal rollers that applied high pressure to the dampened paper, driving it into the ink-filled grooves on the etched or hand-engraved plates. When Dolf turned the large wheel, always moving his body rhythmically, he often used to say in Swiss German:
This referred to a slightly lewd joke he often told us. It went like this. Two Swiss peasants come to Zurich, where they decided to employ the services of a prostitute for the first time in their lives. To save money, they agreed that only one of them should pay for the experience. When the chosen one had finished with the prostitute, he joined his friend, who asked him how it was. The other fellow replied that it was quite pleasant, adding: “Aber die Bewegung is immer die glierchen.”
Printing was always a messy business. To remove the ink from one’s hands, we used a petroleum-based jelly often used by motor mechanics, which Dolf kept in his studio. Removing the ink from one’s hands was easier than removing the lacquer that was painted on to zinc plates to prevent acid from reaching parts that were not to be etched. To explain, a zinc plate is covered with lacquer, which is then removed with tools of varying sharpness to expose parts of the plates which the artist requires to be etched. This is of course an oversimplification. Dolf who was very inventive showed us many other techniques for producing etched plates. It is likely that his early training in science helped him to develop interesting new ways in printmaking. Dolf maintained an interest in science, as is exemplified by his book “Art and Science”, published in 1972. Its opening words are:
“Art and science are generally considered totally different disciplines. The aim of this book is to draw attention to some of the qualities they share.”
Dolf was a superb teacher. Although the students in our classes were of mixed ability, he brought out the best in each and every one of us. I found that he was particularly good on critiquing composition. The compositions and ideas embodied in his own creations were mostly superb. He used to look at one’s work, immediately understand what we were trying to achieve, and to nudge us gently and constructively in such a way that we ended up with what we were hoping to produce and express.
Once, he held an exhibition of our, his students’, work in his studio and asked us to invite our friends. At the end of the evening, Dolf had sold several of his own prints, but none of us managed to sell any that we had created. Dolf told us off, saying that none of us had worked hard enough, if at all, on getting our friends to buy our works.
After Dolf’s wife died, he continued the classes, but used to be reluctant to see us leave at the end of the evening. I liked Dolf so much that I was always sad when the classes came to an end. However, after he became a widower, we used to follow the classes by walking with him to a Turkish restaurant nearby in Willesden, where we all enjoyed a late supper with him.
The last time I saw Dolf was when he was lying in a hospital bed near the end of his life. Even in hospital, he was in reasonably high spirits, telling his visitors stories and jokes. His house in Sumatra Road still stands. I do not know whether his wonderful studio is still being used to create works of art, but it is with Dolf and his students that I will remember it.
Finally, having read the above, I hope that you will not get the wrong idea when I invite you to “come up and see my etchings”. Many years ago, a young lady did accept this invitation when I made it; she is now my wife.
HOLLAND HOUSE in Holland Park (west London) was built in the early 17th century (about 1604) in the Jacobean style. It was designed by the architect John Thorpe (dates uncertain: c1555-c1655), who is thought to be the creator of Audley End House in Essex. In 1939, King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) attended a debutante ball at Holland House. Little did they know that this was to be the last great ball to be held at the house. After the German Luftwaffe began devastating London, Holland House was hit by twenty-two incendiary bombs during a ten-hour raid on the night of the 27th of September 1940. Much of the old house was destroyed apart from the east wing. Fortunately, the library and its valuable contents remained undamaged. A video (www.britishpathe.com/video/holland-house-damaged) made by Pathé News shows the house shortly after it was bombed.
The house remained as a ruin until 1952 when its then owner, Giles Fox-Strangways, 6th Earl of Ilchester (1874-1959), a Member of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England from 1939–1959, sold the remains of the house and its extensive grounds (now Holland Park) to the London County Council. Eventually in 1986, what was left of the building was transferred to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. In normal, non covid19, summers, the now well-preserved remains of the house become the home of a temporary theatre where opera is performed. For many years, but no longer, the relatively intact part of the house was used as a youth hostel by the YHA.
Recently, I have acquired a facsimile edition of “History and Antiquities of Kensington” by Thomas Faulkner, which was published originally in 1820. I have also my own copy of an original edition of Volume 5 of “Old and New London” by Edward Walford, published in 1878. Both books were published when Holland House was still intact, and both contain engravings showing how the house looked both outside and inside. Faulkner’s book contains a lengthy detailed listing of all the artworks and books that the house contained. These items included several paintings by artists as famous as Teniers, Canaletto, Joshua Reynolds, and Hogarth, to name but a few. Luckily, most of the art treasures in the house were removed for safety before the outbreak of WW2. The illustrations, some of which I have reproduced, demonstrate how great a tragedy it was that Holland House no longer remains intact.
An engraving of the Tower of Babel by Dolf Rieser (see: More about Dolf Rieser) used to hang overlooking the first landing of the staircase in our family home in north-west London.
In my thirties I worked as a dentist and lived in north Kent. Almost every weekend, I used to drive to visit my widowed father in our family home. On one of these visits I noticed a box lying on the landing beneath the Tower of Babel engraving. It was an unopened, sealed box containing a dental water pik. This is a device that can be used to pulse tiny jets of water between neighbouring teeth in order to dislodge deposits of dental plaque (bacterial debris). It has proved to be a far less effective method of removing plague than dental floss, which itself is less eggective than the use of tiny interdental brushes. I was a bit surprised that my father had bought a water pik as he is not a lover of gadgets.
For several weeks after I first noticed the unopened package, I kept returning to my family home and seeing the unopened package, which was gradually becoming covered with dust. Eventually, I asked my father about it.
He told me that each time he visited his dentist, ‘D’, he was asked to purchase one of these water piks. After a series of visits, he paid out almost £100 to buy one. I asked him why he had wasted his money on something he was not going to use. He said:
“D kept on pestering me to buy one. He was getting on my nerves, so to shut him up I bought one. I have no intention of using it.”
No doubt profit was not the only motive for D wanting my father to own a water pik, and he might have been surprised by my father’s reason for buying one, namely to put an end to his ‘hard sell’.
From my childhood until I qualified as a dentist in 1982, aged 30, I drew and painted a great deal. Creating pictures was one of my favourite pastimes. In the late 1970s when I was already studying to become a dentist, I joined a weekly print-making class. It was held in the West Hampstead studio of my mother’s cousin, the etcher/engraver Dolf Rieser (1898-1983; see: https://dolfrieser.com/biography/ ).
The image above is from an etching that I created in Dolf’s studio. It is a composition inspired by electron micography of intra-cellular structures. At the time I created it, I had just finished a PhD in a biological subject and was studying biology that was considered necessary to qualify as a dentist. Interestingly, Dolf had also studied biology (genetics) in his youth, receiving a doctorate in the subject. He took to artistic pursuits after completing his studies in biology. Later in his life he wrote a book called “Art and Science” (published in 1972 by Studio Vista). Dolf was an inspiring teacher with a great understanding of compositional technique.
In 1982, I began practising as a dentist. It goes without saying that a dentist’s work involves a great deal of use of the hands and fingers. All day long, five days a week, I was doing the fiddly kind of things with my hands and fingers. Prior to qualification as a dentist, I had used my hands and fingers to create often complex images (drawings, paintings, etchings, and copper engravings). I found that my urge to create images diminished rapidly after I began practising dentistry. I suppose that the clinical activities satisfied my need to employ my manual dexterity in other ways. Sadly, now that I am retired I have not (yet) gone back to creating images. Now my fingers are kept busy at the keyboard, creating books and blog articles.
“Come up and see my etchings…” is often interpreted as being an invitation to sexual adventures. But when I used to say those words, there were, actually, genuine etchings to be viewed.
My late mother had a cousin Dolf Rieser (1898-1983; https://dolfrieser.com/biography/), who used to hold classes to teach etching and engraving. He lived in West Hampstead. I used to attend his classes onc evening a week while I was a dental student (1976-82). Dolf was an excellent teacher and an inventive artist. His comments on composition were constructive and and always apt.
Dolf, who had a doctorate in some aspect of biology, became interested in art long before WW2. In the compulsory tea breaks that we had during the classes, he would tell us about his life as a young artist in Paris. He would frequent the same cafés as Picasso and other famous artists. The great artists in Paris during the thirties sat at one table presided over by Picasso. Budding artists like Dolf sat at neighbouring tables. He was very proud of a small picture by Joan Miró, which hang next to the door to his studio in London. Miró, who was five years older than Dolf, had presented his picture to his young friend ( i.e. Dolf).
Having studied in Switzerland, Dolf had learnt how to ski in the 1920s. He used to ski every year in Switzerland while he was becoming an artist in Paris. He told us that in the thirties when he used to arrive at the railway station in Paris in order to visit the mountains with his skis, people would stop him to ask him what he was carrying because in those days hardly anyone in Paris went skiing. Few people in Paris had ever seen skis.
I loved the classes. It was wonderful becoming so immersed in what I was doing that I lost all sense of time and, more importantly, everything that was worring me at the time evaporated from my head during the three hours each week while I was engrossed in creating an artwork.
I graduated as a dentist in early 1982 and went into practice. Soon after that, Dolf died. Also, my urge to create artworks (prints, drawings, and paintings) seemed to disappear. I suppose that was because I was working all day with my hands in the surgery, my need to do fiddly manual tasks in my spare time, such as drawing and etching, diminished.
By now, you are probably wondering whether I ever invited anyone to come up and see my etchings. Well, of course I did, but I will not tell you whom I invited. Suffice it to say that the woman I eventually married has a good collection of my works!
The picture is a detail of an etching by Adam Yamey
yamey 