Louisa Loakes is a contemporary block-printer and artist whose work is very much in the Barron & Larcher tradition. With her geometric patterns, monochromatic palette, and "dash of hand-painted colour", she focusses on the "beautifully simple, slow art of hand-carved block printing". This is 'Rhombus', printed on linen.

Joyce Clissold (1905-82) worked for Footprints while still a student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts where she later taught. She then managed the studio which, during its heyday in the mid-1930s, had up to 50 employees—mostly women—who came to work at Joyce’s home/studio in Brentford. As this writer says, "Apprentices learned to mix dyes and assist with printing while Joyce designed and carved most of the lino blocks" and the textiles were "narrative and jolly, their living quality enhanced by the slightly wonky block registration". Although the studio later suffered financial setbacks, Joyce carried on designing. This is her "Festival of Women" bandana (1957); the V&A has several of her designs.

Several well-known artists experimented with block-printed textiles; Paul Nash designed patterns for Footprints Studio and Vanessa Bell for Omega Workshops. Because they are relatively cheap and easy to produce with lino blocks, others made them for their own use. Ben Nicholson began this way, sometimes in collaboration with his wife, Barbara Hepworth, and then found he could sell his designs to relieve their poor finances. This is 'Princess' (c1933), which is on display in Kettle's Yard and in the V&A collection.

In the mid-1920s, Enid Marx (1902-1998) spent a year working for Barron and Larcher. She  signed 'a rather stiff  agreement' that she would not take notes on dye recipes and workshop procedures, so she would memorise them and rush home to write them out. As Alan Powers writes in his book, in 1927 she launched her independent career as a textile printer, cutting her own blocks, and developing her modernist style with ingenious combinations, overlays and colourways. This is 'Rope' (c1935, V&A), and we have used one of her designs on the endpapers of The Hopkins Manuscript 

We have block-printed fabrics on the Post this week, beginning with Phyllis Barron (1890-1964) and Dorothy Larcher (1884-1952), self-taught dyers and printers, who were at the forefront of the revival of block-printing in the 20s and 30s. They experimented with whatever fabric was available eg balloon cotton, prison sheets, velvet, and supplemented wood and lino blocks cut to their designs with found objects such as corrugated cardboard, rubber mats, and pastry cutters. Their fabrics were striking, inventive, and beautifully made; we have used Vernède (above) for the endpapers of As It Was.

Never mind major outdoor events or getting out all the deckchairs for a family Sunday gathering on the terrace with views over the lawn and park as the Fowlers do in Family Roundabout, given the cool, wet, British summer so far, most of us would probably be quite happy to just sit outside with a cup of tea and book. All we need is something resembling summer, as in A Summer Afternoon (undated, private collection) by Arthur Spooner (1873-1962).

In her memoir Period Piece (1952), Gwen Raverat (1885-1957) who illustrated The Runaway, captures the fun and pleasure of messing about in summer in boats on the River Cam. Whether it is in small craft, or punts - as in her painting Punting (undated, Fitzwilliam Museum) - or at splendid regattas, rivers play a central role in the English summer for those fortunate enough to live near to a clean one.