Fred Mizen from Great Bardfield, Essex was a corn dolly maker. He constructed exhibits of the Lion, the animal emblem of England, and the Unicorn, Scotland’s heraldic creature, for the Festival of Britain in London in 1951. They were 7ft tall and took about six months to build! Fred Mizen was illustrated by Edward Bawden in ‘Life in an English Village’.
You can tell Fred was a total bad ass, with the patch over one eye. In Bawden’s watercolour, he’s drinking at his local pub with one of his handmade corn dolly bells hanging above him.
My first attempts at linocut reduction prints are inspired by Fred Mizen’s Lion and Unicorn. I’ve titled them ‘Fred the Lion’ and ‘Mizzen (sic) the Unicorn’. They’ll be on sale in my Etsy shop soon, but if you can’t wait DM me if you’d like to buy one. They are £35 each.
Folk Style Linocuts By MStraccia Art 