Donia Nachshen


Donia Esther Nachshen was a Ukrainian-born British book illustrator and poster artist who is now best known for the posters she produced for the British government during World War Two.

Biography

Nachshen was born in the city of Zhitomir, which was then part of Russia and is now in the Ukraine. Nachshen was born into a Jewish family and after an anti-Jewish pogrom in the city in 1905, the family fled Zhitomir and eventually settled in London. Nachshen did well at school in London and enrolled in the Slade School of Art. By the 1920s she had established herself as a successful book designer. She illustrated translations of works by Arthur Schnitzler and the Nobel Prize winner Anatole France in a style based on Russian folk art and art deco elements. Nachshen also illustrated a version of the Jewish text the Haggadah in 1934 and also illustrated editions of works by Oscar Wilde and Samuel Butler. She also produced illustrations for the Radio Times.
During World War Two, Nachshen produced poster designs for a number of high-profile campaigns, notably the Make Do and Mend campaign run by the Board of Trade and also Telegraph Less for the General Post Office. She continued with her book illustration work during the War, producing designs for versions of Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol and a 1945 collection of short stories by Feodor Dostoyevsky as well as books by Enid Blyton. After the War, Nachshen lived in London and continued to illustrate Russian novels and poetry, mainly for the publishers Constable & Co and also for the Lindsay Drummond company. For the Russian novels, Nachshen used scraperboard to create dramatic illustrations that resembled a style of eastern European woodcuts, while for the children's book that she illustrated she used much lighter pen drawings.

Books illustrated

Books illustrated by Nachshen include,