Rachel Reckitt

Rachel Reckitt (1908–1995) was a British artist, who in a long career worked as a wood engraver, as a sculptor and as a designer of wrought iron work. Her output included book illustrations, tombstones, church sculptures and pub signs.

Biography Reckitt was born and lived in St Albans in Hertfordshire until 1922 when her family moved to Old Cleeve in Somerset to live in a large country house known as Golsoncott.

After a spell at the Taunton School of Art, Reckitt studied wood engraving at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London from 1933 to 1937, where she was taught by Iain Macnab. During this period she began exhibiting stone and wood carvings with the London Group and also prints with the Society of Wood Engravers. In 1937 she began making sculptured inn signs using metal sheeting and other materials for pubs in Somerset. During World War II Reckitt undertook relief work in the Whitechapel area of London and also assisted with the evacuation of children from the city to Golsoncott. After the war she studied sculpture at the Hammersmith School of Building Crafts for five years and also studied lithography at the Central School of Art and Design. From then on she would produce sculptures and other pieces in steel and metal from her west Somerset home at Rodhuish. In 2001 a retrospective touring exhibition was mounted by the Somerset County Museums Service which was accompanied by the book Rachel Reckitt: where everything that meets the eye. The author Penelope Lively was Reckitt's niece and accounts of her appear in Lively's memoirs Oleander Jacaranda and A House Unlocked. After Reckitt's death Golsoncott was sold and the funds raised were used to create the Golsoncott Foundation to support the arts and in her memory. The Foundation provided support for another exhibition of Reckitt’s work at the Museum of Somerset in 2024 and 2025.

Books illustrated Books illustrated by Reckitt include, Voices on the Green by ARJ Wise & RA Smith, (Joseph), 1945 London, South of the River by SP Myers, (Elek, Visions of England series), 1949 English Country Short Stories by Walter de la Mare, (Elek), 1949 People with Six Legs by M Bosanquet, (Faber and Faber), 1953 Seven Psalms, (Skelton's Press), 1981.