Philip Bawcombe

Philip William Bawcombe, FRSA born in London in 1906 and died in 2000, was an industrial designer, inter alia for film studios, and official South African war artist during World War II, who also produced acclaimed collections of paintings illustrating the cities of Johannesburg and Kimberley, in South Africa, published as books in 1973 and 1976 respectively.

Bawcombe was born in London in 1906. He attended the Choir School of St Peter's, Eaton Square, and sang at both St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. He completed his schooling at Framlingham College in Suffolk.

Bawcombe was apprenticed to a firm of shopfitters before joining the design department of a London firm of interior decorators. He afterwards became a senior designer for ocean liner decorators.

From 1930 Bawcombe applied his skills to film sets joining the industrial art department of Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Two years later he joined the nascent Sound Film Producing & Recording Studios, which later became Shepperton Studios, as resident art director.

Bawcombe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1938.

Bawcombe went out to Southern Africa, first to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and then South Africa just prior to the outbreak of World War II. He enlisted with the South African forces, serving initially in the Middle East where he was commissioned as second in command of a camouflage unit. He was responsible for designing dummy tanks constructed on the backs of military lorries as a decoy.

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