Pauline Baines ( Behr; 10 September 1917 – 10 November 2020) was a British book designer and typographer. She did war work for the Ministry of Information, and worked for

Thames & Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...

in London. Born in

Hove Hove ( ) is a seaside resort in East Sussex, England. Alongside Brighton, it is one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove. Originally a fishing village surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th century in respon ...

into an observant Jewish family with origins in Lithuania, although in adulthood she did not consider herself part of

Anglo-Jewry British Jews (often referred to collectively as British Jewry or Anglo-Jewry) are British citizens who are Jewish. The number of people who identified as Jews in the United Kingdom rose by just under 4% between 2001 and 2021. History The firs ...

. She was the second child of Moses and Sonia Behr, both originally from Lithuania. The family moved to London and she grew up in

Cricklewood Cricklewood is a town in North London, England, in the London Boroughs of Camden, Barnet, and Brent. The Crown pub, now the Clayton Crown Hotel, is a local landmark and lies north-west of Charing Cross. Cricklewood was a small rural hamlet ...

. She first went to a small school in Hampstead, then to Brondesbury and Kilburn School for Girls when the family moved to

Willesden Green Willesden () is an area of north-west London, situated 5 miles (8 km) north-west of Charing Cross. It is historically a parish in the county of Middlesex that was incorporated as the Municipal Borough of Willesden in 1933; it has forme ...

. She wanted to attend university as her brothers had done but instead went to Willesden Art School (now part of

College of North West London The College of North West London (CNWL) is a large further education college in north-west London, England. It was established in 1991 by the merger between Willesden Technical College and Kilburn Polytechnic in the London Borough of Brent. Today ...

) and the Central School of Art (now

Central Saint Martins Central Saint Martins is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art university in London, England. The college offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of short ...

), where she trained in illustration and graphic design. She did war work in a factory and also as a Red Cross volunteer. Later she worked for the Ministry of Information, which was in charge of publicity and propaganda. In preparation for the 1951

Festival of Britain The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. Labour Party cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the ...

, she developed displays for the exhibition ship HMS Campania. From 1958 until her retirement she worked for

, the London-based book publishers, where she was responsible for books such as the ''

catalogue raisonné A (or critical catalogue) is an annotated listing of the works of an artist or group of artists and can contain all works or a selection of works categorised by different parameters such as medium or period. A ''catalogue raisonné'' is normal ...

'' of the French artist

Honoré Daumier Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808 – February 10 or 11, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the July Revolution, Revolution of 1830 ...

. In 1952, she married Harry Baines (1910–1995), a Realist painter and muralist from Manchester. At the beginning of their married life, the couple and a group of their friends formed a co-operative housing society and commissioned

Ernő Goldfinger Ernő Goldfinger (11 September 1902 – 15 November 1987) was a Hungarian-born British architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, and became a key member of the modernist architecture, Modernist architectur ...

to design a small block of flats for them. The building on the Regent's Park Road, which draws on the architect's own Hampstead home

2 Willow Road 2 Willow Road is part of a terraced housing, terrace of three houses in Hampstead, London designed by architect Ernő Goldfinger and completed in 1939. It has been managed by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, ...

, was

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

in 1998. For the rest of their lives the Baines lived at this address in

inner London Inner London is the group of London boroughs that form the interior part of Greater London and are surrounded by Outer London. With its origins in the bills of mortality, it became fixed as an area for statistics in 1847 and was used as an area ...

, between

Camden Town Camden Town () is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London. Laid out as a residential distri ...

and

Primrose Hill Primrose Hill is a Grade II listed public park located north of Regent's Park in London, England, first opened to the public in 1842.Mills, A., ''Dictionary of London Place Names'', (2001) It was named after the natural hill in the centre of t ...

. The couple traveled extensively, particularly in India and Italy. She was a committee member both for her neighbourhood association and for the local Labour Party. She outlived her husband by 25 years but never remarried. She died in London, aged 103.

References

External links

An interview with Pauline Baines
on ''Encounter'', the architecture and design radio series from Monitor Production in Sound {{DEFAULTSORT:Baines, Pauline 1917 births 2020 deaths Alumni of Central Saint Martins People from Willesden People from Cricklewood People from the London Borough of Camden Book designers British book publishers (people) British typographers and type designers Ernő Goldfinger buildings Festival of Britain Labour Party (UK) people British women centenarians