Eileen 'Tirzah' Garwood (1908-51), author of Long Live Great Bardfield, was a wonderfully talented wood engraver. She created her own bookplate in 1927 at the time she was being taught by Eric Ravilious at Eastbourne School of Art. It is typically beautifully designed, finely detailed, funny, and slightly unconventional. 

Bookplates are fascinating little literary artefacts, especially if created by a well-known artist or designer for someone famous. This bookplate is interesting on both counts; it was designed in 1931 by the brilliant Rex Whistler ((1905-1944) for Duff Cooper who wrote Operation Heartbreak. It alludes to Cooper's work in the Foreign Office, makes clear his devotion to the grape and to Pol Roger champagne in particular, and features his wife Lady Diana Cooper as the Roman goddess of the hunt.

In Recovery, The Lost Art of Convalescence (2022), written with the aftermath of Covid in mind, Gavin Francis argues persuasively for greater time and attention to be given to the business of getting better. Physical comfort in bed is important to the patient's well-being, and La Convalescente (1906, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille) by Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881-1949) illustrates this beautifully.

The two perfectly-made beds with plump eiderdowns in Bedroom with a Figure, Bar House, East Riding of Yorkshire (undated, after 1914, Beverley Art Gallery) by Mary Elwell (1874-1952) reflect the "rise and fall of twin beds as a popular sleeping arrangement for married couples between 1870 and 1970", as examined by Hilary Hinds in A Cultural History of Twin Beds (2019). Hinds cites the example of Natalie in The New House: "She had been glad when they followed the changing fashion and bought two single beds, although she would never have admitted to herself or anyone else that she did not like the physical proximity." (Interestingly, a later painting by Mary Elwell shows the same bedroom but with a four-poster double bed.)

First World War military hospitals had spartan bedding; Wilfred in Wilfred and Eileen experiences the 'prickly and coarse texture' of the blankets in a Boulogne hospital. But in his work for the spectacular Sandham Memorial Chapel, Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) turns hospital bedclothes into comforting, patterned, protective cocoons. Spencer served as a soldier and a hospital orderly on the Salonika front and, rather than the horrors of war, he chose to depict daily life and domestic duties such as filling tea urns, sorting the laundry and, here, Bedmaking (1927-32).

Like Dorothy Whipple, Margaret Barker (1907-2203) who painted Any Morning (exh. 1929, Tate) was "interested in charging everyday incidents with extraordinary meaning". Her painting underlines just how much labour was required to turn mattresses, make beds, and change, launder, and store bed linen and blankets. Dorothy Whipple knew how exhausting it could be. In Greenbanks, she writes of Letty: "Ambrose went on talking, but she did not listen. He gave her, more and more frequently, the same flat exhausted feeling that she had when she tried to carry a mattress downstairs unaided."

This week on the Post, making beds and adding layers of bedclothes for winter warmth, inspired by reading one of Dorothy Whipple's superb short stories, 'Susan', in which an eiderdown, 'magnificent and highly floral...like a coil of monstrous satin sausages' takes on huge significance. Eiderdowns have all but disappeared since we converted in the 1970s to 'continental quilts', as duvets were known when first introduced by Terence Conran in 1964. The British proved reluctant to give up sheets and blankets; The Eiderdown (1920s, Manchester Art Gallery) by Sydney Carline (1881-1929) emphasises old-fashioned feather-filled comfort and weight.