The Times - UK (2022-02-21)

the times | Monday February 21 2022 49

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Pioneering engineer and

Channel tunnel designer

John Bartlett

Page 50

Pienkowski in his studio in 1987 and, below, at home in southwest London, 1996.

His more than 150 picture books would frequently combine magic with menace

Looking out one morning into the
family garden in rural east Poland, now
Belarus, a nursemaid saw a rabid dog
speeding towards her infant charge.
Foaming jaws snapped inches below
the child’s bare feet as he was hauled in
through the kitchen window.
A few years later that same child, Jan
Pienkowski, was in an air-raid shelter
with his parents during the 1944 War-
saw uprising. A Nazi firebomb hit a field
hospital opposite them and for ever
after Pienkowski had an aversion to any
noise that resembled screaming.
It was there that an exhausted Polish
insurgent, taking shelter with the
family, showed him paper cut-out tech-
niques. Pienkowski later used similar
skills to illustrate more than 150 picture
books, his good humour often rubbing
shoulders with darker moments, many
drawn from memories of a loving but
occasionally traumatic childhood.
Pienkowski’s trademark cut-out sil-
houette figures had come to him in a
last-minute change of mind. Dissatis-
fied with the faces he had drawn when
applying for an early commission, he
left his vividly colourful backgrounds
intact while inking in all his characters.
This proved a shrewd move, with the
finished images transcending age and
ethnic boundaries and thereby appeal-
ing to a wider young audience.
These illustrations for A Necklace of
Raindrops (1968), written by Joan
Aiken, appeared to excellent reviews.
Pienkowski then asked Aiken to write
another text based on eastern Euro-
pean fairytales, with the illustrator now
bringing in assorted wolves, the witch
Baba Yaga and other figures familiar in
stories from his childhood.
The Kingdom Under the Sea, a collec-
tion of magical yet menacing fairytales,
was awarded the Kate Greenaway
medal for the best picture book in 1971.
He was to win again in 1979 for Haunted
House, which features a crocodile in the
bath, an octopus in the sink and a black
cat watching everything with sinister
moving eyes.
Before that Pienkowski and the
children’s author Helen Nicoll (obitu-
ary, October 15, 2012) had started their
Meg and Mog picture-book series, the
first of which was published in January

1972. Meg, a smiling teenager with
      lanky hair, is an amiable witch whose
      spells always go wrong — a condition
      Pienkowski insisted upon. Her striped
      pet cat, Mog, and friend, Owl, accompa-
      ny Meg variously to parties, the zoo, the
      seaside and even the moon. These
      mini-adventures, told in a minimum of
      words in a small-book format, were
      perfect for young readers.
      Pienkowski’s witty illustrations and
      use of comic-strip techniques against a
      backdrop of glowing primary colours
      completed the package. Artist and
      author, who lived miles apart, often met
      in the cafeteria of Membury services,
      on the M4, near Nicoll’s home in Marl-
      borough, where they thrashed out 17
      more stories for Meg and Mog, some-
      times remaining in the service station
      all day. The books were later adapted
      for the stage and turned into a televi-
      sion series.
      With Nicoll dictating a few lines of
      text and Pienkowski then working on
      the drawings, both would combine
      when it came to making up the recipe

for one of Meg’s almost always unsuc-

cessful rhyming spells. These, as often

as not, were composed of exotic ingre-

dients added to a giant iron cauldron.

Television and CD versions followed,

with Alan Bennett reading the part of

Owl, who in later editions attended

school for lessons in “swooping and

pouncing”. There was a successful play

based on the series, starring Maureen

Lipman, who also narrated the stories

on tape. While pop-up picture books

had previously been seen as much as

toys as books, Pienkowski brought new

energy into the whole genre of paper

engineering.

His front cover for Haunted House,

shaped like a door, invites all readers

who dare to “let yourself in”. The first

page contains a gothic-looking stair-

case with a cupboard door at floor level

which, when opened, reveals a sad but

not very frightening ghost. On the wall

a Dracula-type lady plus cat both move

eyes when their tab is pulled. Further

pictures include a King Kong lookalike

arising as his page is opened, a crocodile

snapping its jaws from a bath, a four-

Artist and author often

met in the Membury

services café, on the M4

Obituaries

Jan Pienkowski

Polish-born illustrator of children’s books known for his stunning silhouettes in dozens of titles, including the Meg and Mog series

DAVID CORIO/REDFERNS

poster bed with moving ghosts behind,

and an attic where someone, or some-

thing, is audibly trying to saw itself out

of a packing crate labelled “Transyl-

vania”. An enormous bat with flapping

wings stares down from overhead.

Fascinated by stage design, Pienkow-

ski worked on Beauty and the Beast

(1986) for the Royal Ballet and

Sleeping Beauty for Dis-

neyland Paris. He spent

time having fun, as he

put it, organising

giant murals with

schoolchildren.

He was a great

laugher and at

times was barely

distinguishable

from the children,

sharing their en-

thusiasm and jointly

decorating boats, cara-

vans, buses and on one

occasion even a train. This

way he learnt which items they

found really funny and which scary,

knowledge that was pressed into ser-

vice in later picture books.

Pienkowski also began working on ti-

tles reflecting his Roman Catholic faith.

Christmas (1984) and Easter (1989) each

took half a year to complete. Blazing

with colour but retaining black silhou-

ettes for the leading characters, the art-

work reached new levels of technical

brilliance with its range of tints and tex-

tures. More picture books followed, but

these two remained his favourites.

Jan Michal Pienkowski was born in

1936 in a village near Warsaw. He was

the only son of Jerzy, an estate manag-

er, and his wife, Wanda, a scientist. An

older sister died

before he was born.

In 1939 the family

escaped from the

advancing Russian

army to western

Poland in a horse-

drawn carriage. Life

was tough, with no

electricity, and Jan

was educated at

home by his mother

because Polish child-

ren were no longer

allowed to attend

school. At the age of

eight he produced his

first picture book, a

birthday present for

his father.

The family event-

ually returned to War-

saw, but went on the

run again after the

1944 uprising, settling

at first in Bavaria,

where Jan’s practi-

cally minded father

found work as a farm-

er. After the war they

reached Britain via

Italy, arriving on the

deck of a ship during

a storm, and settled in Herefordshire,

where he attended Lucton School, near

Leominster. When his father inquired if

there would be other foreign boys, the

headmaster replied: “Well, there is one

— from Wales.” Taffy Richards became

Pienkowski’s best friend.

Aged ten he spoke no English, but a

year later he passed his 11-plus exam

and enrolled at Cardinal Vaughan

school, London, from where he won an

exhibition to King’s College, Cam-

bridge, to read classics and then En-

glish. There he was a terrible procrasti-

nator, often working through the night

to meet a last-minute deadline. On one

occasion, as dawn was break-

ing, he propped up an art-

work to look at it from a

distance. The ink ran,

but he chose to make

a feature of it rather

than start again.

Influenced by

Aubrey Beardsley,

whose erotic book

illustrations were

a popular item in

the college library,

Pienkowski con-

tinued to draw and

paint. He was much in

demand for designing

theatre posters and was per-

suaded by his friend and later agent

Angela Holder to turn one of them into

a Christmas card. Leaving Cambridge

together, they set up Gallery Five, with

Pienkowski initially providing what

were then revolutionary designs for

cards and posters. As Helen Oxenbury,

his lifetime friend and fellow illustrator,

put it: “You would never find kittens in

a basket or lurid red roses in the Gallery

Five range.” In his early days he also

worked in the art department of an ad

agency and did live drawing for the

BBC children’s television series Watch!.

In 1964 they were joined as business

manager by the writer David Walser,

who was Pienkowski’s partner for the

rest of his life. They

recorded their civil

partnership at

Richmond register

office on the day in

2005 when it first

became possible.

The couple co-op-

erated on numer-

ous books, with

Walser’s cultured

and measured

prose proving an

admirable foil to

Pienkowski’s con-

tinually breath-

taking artistry.

Working at home

in an attic room

overlooking the

Thames, Pienkowski

increasingly turned

to his computer as his

principal tool for il-

lustration. Often re-

turning to the forests

and wildlife of his

childhood, his pic-

tures, however occa-

sionally menacing,

always gave way to

happy resolutions by

the final page.

Despite a bipolar condition, Pien-

kowski remained a warm personality,

retaining many friends and constantly

making new ones. His laid-back per-

formance on Desert Island Discs on

Radio 4 in 2009 won him more fans,

with the presenter Kirsty Young later

choosing him as one of her all-time

favourite guests.

Living with Alzheimer’s disease in his

closing years, he stayed a benign if in-

creasingly demanding figure, still filling

up notebooks with drawings and happy

to wear the various discarded items of

clothing picked up on his daily dog

walks from his home in Barnes. In May

2019 he received the Book Trust’s life-

time achievement award, but by then

had little idea of what was happening.

In earlier times Pienkowski recalled

how he had been introduced to Polish

folk tales, and the witches who stalk

them, by a kindly neighbour. “She’d tell

me these totally unsuitable stories, get

to a cliffhanger — and stop,” he told the

journalist Alison Flood, adding that the

neighbour would conclude the story

only if he drank his milk.

“I used to have terrible dreams,

nightmares, of this witch, always chas-

ing me and trying to put me in a pot, and

you know how you can’t run in a dream,

you sort of freeze? It was all like that. I

think in a way she gave birth to Meg,

because I think Meg was really subli-

mating, isn’t that the word? Taking this

terrible monster from my childhood

and making it into a harmless toy.”

Jan Pienkowski, children’s book

illustrator, was born on August 8, 1936.

He died from complications of dementia

on February 19, 2022, aged 85

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