Biography
Peter Barker-Mill (b. Bordighera, Italy - d. 1994) lived as a child at Mottisfont Abbey, in Hampshire (now National Trust) and in London and in Italy. After two years in the army in India, Egypt and Singapore, he attended the progressively run Grosvenor School of Modern Art, in London, and the Academie Andre Lahote, in Paris. He was commissioned by Christopher Sandford to make wood engravings for Golden Cockerel Press books, the first in 1937 and others after the Second World War.
His involvement with film included work with the documentary film-maker Cyril Jenkins and led to his war service involvement in the Civil Defence Camouflage Unit. In 1944 he joined a small unit that went to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning and was responsible for models of the proposed developments under the Abercrombie Plan for London and the Thomas Sharp plan for Durham. These experiences influenced his commissioned murals from 1961 until 1981, in which he used a variety of materials, including the development of new techniques with pigments and dyes integrated with plastic laminates. His work included a war memorial for the Tank Corps at Bovington, in Dorset. He was a proponent of promoting the crafts in Brtain and an early member of the Crafts Council. He lived in Wookey Hole, in Somerset where he amassed a modest collection of contemporary art and craft.
In 1989 the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, for whom he had served as its first Chairman from 1965 and was its largest benefactor, securing thetea warhouse on the waterfront and a mjor art venue, showed a retrospective exhibition of his work.
