John Craske

John Craske
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Born	(1881-07-06) July 6, 1881 Lower Sheringham, North Norfolk, UK
Died	1943
Nationality	United Kingdom
Occupation	Artist

John Craske (1881 - 1943) became known as an artist who worked with coloured threads to create embroideries. His works gained the attention of British and American collectors and were displayed in a number of exhibitions both in his native Norfolk, UK, in London and in America. John started life as a fisherman sailing out of Grimsby to deep sea waters. He took up embroidery after he became an invalid at the age of 26.

Early life

John Craske was born on 6 July 1881 in the fishing community in Lower Sheringham, North Norfolk, UK. He was the third of five sons and four daughters born to Edward and Hannah Craske. His father Edward was a deep sea fisherman. The family moved to Grimsby where John went to school until the age of 14 when he was expected to join his brothers on fishing expeditions on sailing trawlers from the age of 14.

The following extracts describe the conditions the boys and their father would have encountered while away from home for days at a time, often in freezing conditions:

Sail trawling in the early 20th century

"Trawling is a very old method of catching fish by dragging a bag-shaped net along the sea bed to scoop them up. Trawling developed rapidly in Great Britain early in the nineteenth century. The new fishing grounds discovered in the North Sea could be fully exploited when the advent of the railways allowed the rapid transport of fish from the East Coast ports to the markets in London and the Midlands.

"When sailing smacks from the 1850s pushed further north in search of new grounds, they encountered colder and rougher weather. As a result, they were away for much longer periods, with the average trip lasting about fourteen days."

Move inland

From the 1890s onward, steam trawlers became more and more prevalent and they were able to travel longer distances and get the catch back to port more quickly. As a result, the sailing smacks were no longer competitive and John's family moved inland, to Dereham, in 1905. The family set up a fish business in Dereham for wet and smoked fish and delivered fish to the surrounding villages with a white pony. The shop was at No 1 Wellington Road in Dereham.

John belonged to the Salvation Army based in St Nicholas Street, just around the corner from this shop. He sang with the Salvation Army choir in the market place in Dereham and this is where Laura Eke was first attracted to him as they both shared deep religious convictions. Laura was a member of the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Commercial Road, Dereham, and this is where they were married on 22nd July 1908.

John and Laura moved to Swanton Morley where John ran his fish round with two ponies and a pannier on each. The fresh fish from Lowestoft had to be collected from the station at North Elmham and so in December 1909, they moved there. John built the business by working from 6am to 11pm and took no holidays. One day a week he collected fish from Lowestoft docks for his father's fish shop where they did all their own fish curing and smoking. He was very energetic and business-like and never took a day off.

While John was out on his rounds, Laura did the curing - smoked haddock, codling, cod roe, sprats, herring and whiting; kippered herring and mackerel and bloated herring. She also boiled crabs, lobsters, crayfish, winkles and oysters, cranking the water up from the well on a chain. The winter was harsh, working with ice and salt.

In the census of 02-04-1911, John was 29 and Laura was 28. They lived at Chapel Street, North Elmham, where he was recorded as a Fish Merchant. They employed George Baker as a Fish Hawker. In Kelly's Directory of 1912, John Craske is listed at North Elmham as Craske & Son, fishmongers.

In 1914 they left North Elmham and returned to Dereham where they rented number No 42 Norwich Road. Laura hoped John would not have to work so hard and he continued his hawking from the house. Laura ran the smoke house for her father-in-law and for John's business.

Onset of first World War

In 1914 the first World War began. John was exempted from active service, rated C2 at the first test.

In 1916 Kelly's Directory listed John Craske - Fish Curer at 42 Norwich Road, East Dereham.

As there were too few volunteers to fill the ranks, the Military Service Bill was introduced in January 1916, with compulsory conscription for the first time in Britain's history. Every unmarried man and childless widower between 18 and 41 was offered three choices: (Wikipedia)

• Enlist at once.
• Attest at once - under Derby's system.
• Or on 2 March 1916 be automatically deemed to have enlisted.

In May 1916 the bill was extended to married men. (Wikipedia)

26 May 1916 saw John's second attestation for army service at the age of 34 years and 10 months. He was rated C3 and so exempt from active service. The C3 designation is only suitable for sedentary work but fit to serve in home garrisons.

In 1917 Laura tore muscles in her side and the doctor said she must give up the work in the smoke house. That same week, John went into the army. For six months he was in the training corps. For some of the time he was at Pulham Market and other times at Dereham, working on his physical fitness, digging trenches or on route marches. Some local people appealed against his exemption and so John was called up.

He was mobilised from Britannia Barracks, Norwich, to Croydon, to the Bedfordshire Regiment Transport, his number 39126. With him went Mr Herbert Cave, the photographer based on Church Street in Dereham and Mr Wright, the outfitter from High Street.

On 7th April 1917 Laura received a telegram to say John had influenza and had collapsed while training. He was in the Croydon war hospital (which was in a requisitioned school). Three days later she received another saying that an American Doctor at The Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, had diagnosed an abscess on the brain and said that John would not recover. Laura and John's mother went to Croydon and arrived at midnight. John had been transferred to Brooks Hospital. In all he went to seven hospitals. He was diagnosed as unfit due to "mental stupor (Perm.)"" and was finally sent in August to Thorpe Hospital outside Norwich. Laura visited him three times a week until he came home. He was discharged from the army on 28 October 1918.

Returning to the coast as an invalid

John was discharged into the care of Laura and she brought him home on 31.10.1918. He came under the care of Dr John Duigan who suggested that the sea might cure him. They locked up the house and went to Grimsby to stay with his brothers, Edward and Robert, who took him out fishing. One day he seemed to ‘wake up’ and asked ‘Why am I here? This is not our home’. The very next day they returned to Dereham. Needing to make a living Laura prayed for guidance and decided to look for a shop.

In April 1919 John found that number 15 Norwich Street was empty and he was able to rent it. Laura and her sister cleaned the shop and prepared it for business. She opened the fish shop on the Friday week before Easter. The local people supported them and they never wanted for rent. The shop was open from 8am to 8.30pm for six days a week.

John’s father suddenly died in the spring of 1920 (19.4.1920) and John relapsed through shock. Dr Duigan suggested to John that he should try painting. By August John was ill in “mind and body”. On recommendation from Dr Duigan for ‘sea air’ they went to Blakeney to stay for three weeks in a cottage called ‘The Pightle’ which the family rented for them. The cottage was not suitable, it had windows below street level, but it had been booked for six months by her brother-in-law so she had to pay £1 a week.

They returned to Dereham in 1921 to find their rented house in Norwich Road was not available and the shop had been sold as the owner had died. A smaller shop at 21 Norwich Street had been bought by the family but there was no room for them as Robert and his wife Carrie were living in the rooms above the shop. John took that to heart.

In 1923 Laura bought an unfurnished cottage in Wiveton for £100 down with £70 she borrowed from Robert. She undertook to pay back £5 a week. She sent home for some furniture and was surprised when all her belongings were sent. John’s mother stayed with them for the first three months they were there and the brothers visited at weekends. During the time at Wiveton they bought a ship’s boat and John cut the sails, Laura made them on her sewing machine. They used to go out on the ebb and come back by the flow and John steadily improved in health although he was still confined to a wheelchair.

Laura would take him for long walks four miles in each direction along the coastal path. He began to make and sell model boats and began to be able to walk a little. Some Americans staying at Sheringham bought two model boats.

Early in 1926 Laura and John returned to Dereham to a house at the top of Norwich Road near Laura’s brother. Laura sold the cottage at Wiveton for its purchase price and paid Robert back his loan. When John was well he helped at the shop. During the summer whilst painting the firm’s van John suffered sunstroke. Dr Duigan advised another spell by the sea and they took a cottage in Hemsby. John continued to make model boats and took up painting. He painted a boat on the lid of a bait box and another on a bread board. He always painted seascapes and boats and used any flat surface – plywood from tea chests, box lids, and door panels. He moved around the front room of his cottage painting on every surface and used whitewash, house paint or any paint he could find.

In 1927 Valentine Ackland was staying with her parents in Winterton and heard from an aunt about an invalid fisherman who made model boats. She set off to find him and visited their home where she saw the paintings on doors and and every available surface. She admired the picture of the fishing boat ‘The James Edward” and she wanted to buy it. As neither John or Laura would name a price she offered them thirty shillings which they accepted.

Painting with wool

John and Laura moved back to Dereham in 1928 and bought the house in Norwich Road which they previously rented. By now John had been diagnosed as being diabetic and was too ill to help with the move or to decorate the neglected house. While Laura redecorated the house they stayed with Laura’s mother at 14 Norwich Street. One evening John was so restless that Laura suggested they could make a picture from wools. The only calico they could find was a piece that Laura’s mother had bought for Christmas pudding cloths. Once John had been shown needlework he began to ‘paint with wool’. So in December 1928 his first work was a ‘mantle border’.

His brothers Edward and William helped him with creative projects such as the concrete fish pond in the shape of a whale in the back garden of No 42 Norwich Road, which John decorated with shells, and a wood carving of a shark under the front window. If he was not bed-ridden John would always be found out in his garden.

His health went into another decline and during long periods of illness he worked in his primitive form of wool embroidery and depicted the scenes of the seafaring life he had known. He worked his embroideries in any materials he could find including wool and string. He spent long periods in a coma and during one period was in bed for three years.

Recognition by American collectors

Meanwhile, Valentine Ackland showed the painting she had bought of ‘The James Edward’ at the Warren Gallery in Maddox St, London in 1929. It was seen by Dorothy Warren who gave Valentine Ackland a blank cheque to obtain Craske paintings for her gallery. She tracked down the Craskes to Dereham and bought several of his paintings and some early embroidery. These were exhibited at the Warren Gallery in 1930. The review in The Times was favourable.

In 1931 Valentine Ackland took her new friend the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner to meet John and she bought several paintings. A second exhibition in 1933 at the Warren gallery brought in more revenue for them.

By now John was concentrating on his embroideries and made the 14 foot ‘Panorama of the Norfolk Coast’ which is now exhibited at Glandford Shell Museum. Another entitled ‘Beach Scene' was later acquired by Peter Pears and is now held at the Red House at Aldeburgh.

Another friend of Valentine Ackland was an American called Elizabeth Wade White who had contacts with several American galleries and exhibitions so a considerable number of pictures were shipped to America. In 1941 John's work was featured in the exhibition at the American British Art Centre, New York.

In 1942 John was working on a canvas which was 132 inches long and 22 inches wide with 800 soldiers in boats and on the beaches depicting the ‘Evacuation of Dunkirk’. John was able to listen on the wireless to accounts of the small boats who sailed to rescue soldiers from the French coast in the historic WW2 evacuation. This embroidery is now held by the Norfolk Museums Service.

In 1943 John was taken into hospital taking his canvas with him and continued working on ‘Dunkirk’ right up to his death. A small area is unfinished. He died on 26 August 1943. After his death his work as an artist was recognized for the details of a bygone way of life and his work was exhibited in the Glandford Shell Museum, Strangers Hall Norwich and at Snape Maltings.

His art was featured in the exhibition at the American British Art Centre, New York in 1949 and in 1950 also appeared in exhibitions at the Margaret Brown Gallery Boston and the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut.

Laura died in 1957, in the house at No 42 Norwich Road. Her body was laid to rest with John's in the cemetery on Cemetery Road, Dereham Norfolk, UK, where the grave can still be seen.

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893 - 1978) had struck up a friendship with the British tenor, Sir Peter Pears (1910-1986) and loaned several of her Craske works for an exhibition at the Aldeburgh Festival which had been started by Peter Pears together with his musical associate, the composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). They both started to collect works by John Craske. In 1970 Sylvia Townsend Warner decided to donate many of her Craske works to the Aldeburgh Festival.

A biography of Craske records: "The display of forty-seven pictures at the twenty-fourth Aldeburgh Festival, in 1971, was the first major Craske retrospective, the nucleus formed by the Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland bequest and individual works lent by friends - Bea Howe, Gerald Finzi's wife, Janet Machen, Elizabeth Wade White and Valentine's solicitor Peg Manisty. A further group of six works came from John Diugan, son of Craske's doctor in Dereham who had originally accepted them in settlement of outstanding medical bills. The exhibition with a catalogue essay by Sylvia and an enthusiastic article by Bea Howe in Country Life, was such a success that other more modest exhibitions were held at the festival in 1973, 1977 and 1980."

Works owned by Peter Pears are on display at the Red House, Aldeburgh. There is also a considerable archive including photographs and correspondence between John and Laura and their American benefactors.

In 1993, 50 years after John's death, the Chairman of the Dereham Antiquarian Society (now Dereham Heritage Trust), Terry Davy, organised an exhibition of more than 50 of John's paintings and embroideries and he also wrote and published a pamphlet[1] with first hand accounts of John's life.

A second exhibition was held in Dereham in 2004. In 2005, John's nephew, William Frederick Edward Craske (Bill) gave John's portrait and a painting and an embroidery to Sheringham Museum.

There have been many articles written for newspapers, magazines and scholarly articles about John Craske, his life with his wife Laura and the works of art he created. The book 'Threads' by Julia Blackburn pieces together his life and was published in 2015, launched with an exhibition of his work at Norwich Art School

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[[Category:1881 births