JR’s founder Janet Levin looks back on the full and fascinating life of artist, teacher, writer and good friend Erica Gordon
To see the lighted candles in their huge chandeliers is truly magical. Upstairs in the ladies’ gallery lurk the spirits of donnas and señoritas in their designated seats behind the wooden lattices. As they look down on their menfolk, they modestly wave their fans, revealing dark, discriminating eyes.
With these words, Erica Gordon transported JR readers to the founding of the Bevis Marks Synagogue 300 years earlier. This was in the second issue of our magazine, itself part of the Jewish Renaissance that had started to bloom around us. She was one of that team of volunteers who provided the energy that set the magazine on its path.
Erica drew on her historical training, linguistic skills and artistic know-how to introduce JR readers to the Art of the Haggadah (Spring 2003), Szyk’s Four Sons (January 2005) and the Jewish Persian Carpet (January 2004). In spring 2005, she was captivated by the remarkable mechanical sculptures of Russian emigré Eduard Bersudsky. She became design consultant for JR and continued to contribute to our art pages up to 2008.
Growing up in Willesden, the only child in a traditional, but exacting, Jewish family, Erica studied history at the LSE and, against parental advice, painting and drawing at St Martin’s School of Art. There was more parental support for her year in Israel, where she became fluent in Hebrew, and she then took part in the summer programme of a French-Jewish organisation set up to help young refugees from North Africa, where she happily taught arts and crafts.
Erica Gordon with Millie and her dog, papier-mâché, 2001
In 1968, after her return to England, Erica married Mike and, in 1985, by now accompanied by their brood of four children, moved to Richmond, where I first met her and she became a good friend.
Erica taught Hebrew and Bible studies at the Richmond shul cheder and later offered art therapy to disadvantaged children and old people in the borough. She also worked for artist David Shilling, making textiles that were sold in Heal’s.
She discovered Richmond Adult Community College and the joys of its art department, launching a long period of intensive creativity. Their rambling Victorian house became a labyrinth of surprises as she developed skills with paper, ceramics and fabrics. Alongside her paintings, vases and ceramic figures, brightly coloured papier-mâché characters, some based on Mexican Alebrije dragons, were to be found around their home. Erica was generous in her gifts of painstakingly crafted silver and enamel jewellery. The college celebrated her bold, eclectic, original art with a special exhibition of her work.
She also turned her hand to theatre. Her play, co-written with the director Auriol Smith, about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was produced by the Orange Tree Theatre. And she wrote a children’s book, The Little House, based on a traditional Eastern European Jewish folk tale, illustrated by Victor Ambrus.
Alebrije dragon, papier-mâché
Erica not only had a deep attachment to her Jewish heritage, but was also strongly interested in other cultures, in particular oriental art. In 2000 she was awarded first prize for ‘outstanding achievements in a variety of art and design projects’ by the V&A Museum. Her winning fabrics using traditional Japanese designs etched into velvet, drawing on a technique called devoré, were exhibited at the V&A’s Far Eastern Gallery. The following year, her small figure Millie, accompanied by her dog, came second in a V&A repeat competition. This led to two further, larger figures: Goldie, and then Violet, who was over six-feet tall and created for an exhibition to celebrate the history of the St Pancras Hotel.
Her extraordinary gift for friendship gained her numerous friends. In her prime, she delighted in meeting those who shared her interests; she loved beautiful things and was full of original ideas. Yet she had deeply embedded insecurities and did not take life easily. Her remarkable period of creativity, which lasted almost two decades, ended when she fell victim to a lengthy and severe depression and would not see even good and longstanding friends, who nonetheless spoke movingly at her shiva of the love she had inspired in them.
We are fortunate that her husband Mike and her children have kept many of her artworks, which will, alongside her JR articles, continue to provide a memorial to Erica’s unique creativity.
By Janet Levin