Relative Ties highlights the work of three generations of women artists from the illustrious Nicholson family – Mabel Nicholson, Nancy Nicholson, EQ Nicholson and Louisa Creed – and explores what women inherit from their mothers, what can be passed down matrilineal lines and the importance of siblings to a creative practice. It brings together designs, paintings, preparatory drawings, textiles and wallpaper, alongside unprecedented insights into the tools and techniques the artists used. Published on the occasion of an exhibition at The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, it also includes a newly commissioned work by contemporary artist Katie Schwab (b.1985).
  
Together, the Nicholson women – Mabel, her daughter Nancy, daughter-in-law EQ, and EQ’s daughter Louisa Creed – form a celebrated line of artists working from the late nineteenth century to the present day across a multiplicity of spaces, contexts and mediums, ranging from paintings and works on paper to wallpaper and fabric. Relative Ties traces the origins of these disciplines to Mabel’s theatrical portrait of the young Nancy as a harlequin, a painting that sits at the beginning of an ongoing family fascination with interiors, pattern, costume and dress that would go on to shape the work of the Nicholson women across the generations. 
 
Prolific artists and fabric designers Nancy and EQ Nicholson, not only relatives but close friends and collaborators, expressed their love for design through the exploration of art within domestic spaces, creating textile designs for artists such as Barbara Hepworth and family members such as brother Ben Nicholson. Through access to Nancy Nicholson’s studio materials, Relative Ties allows a fresh glimpse into the tools and techniques behind Nancy and EQ’s designs, including metal type and zinc stencils. 
 
The profound influence of the matrilineal line reaches the present day with the work of EQ’s daughter, the celebrated rag-rug maker Louisa Creed, whose rugs are renowned for their sensitive colours and painterly form. 
 
In celebration of the legacy of the Nicholson women, Relative Ties concludes with a new series of works by artist and practitioner Katie Schwab (b.  1985), commissioned as a response to the practices, materials and techniques of the artists in the show.