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About Jan Pieńkowski
Jan
Pieńkowski was born in Warsaw in 1936. His family were architects
and artists. He made his first book when he was 8, as a present for his
father. It was all about road rage - but featuring a horse and cart. The
war made his childhood an adventure, if not a very comfortable one at
times, taking him from Poland to Austria, Germany, Italy and finally bringing
him in 1946 to England. With his parents, he came to Herefordshire, where
he had two new experiences - going to school for the first time and learning
English. Later, he went to The Cardinal Vaughan School in London and then
to King's College, Cambridge, where he read Classics and English - and
managed to find time for a lot of posters and stage design.
He
co-founded the greetings card company, Gallery Five, with Angela Holder. He worked in advertising,
publishing, and doing graphics for the BBC children's TV series Watch!
In his spare time, he started to illustrate books for children. The books
took over. He won the Library Association Kate Greenaway Medal in 1972
for his silhouette illustrations to Joan Aiken's The Kingdom Under
The Sea and again in 1980 for his Haunted House.
He was to use his silhouette technique to dramatic effect in other books
like the Fairytale Library.
Jan pioneered the modern Pop-up book with Haunted House (subsequently on CD-Rom), Robot, Dinner Time, Good Night and 17 others. Christmas Kingdom, Phone Book and Door Bell added sound effects while Botticelli's Bed and Breakfast capers irreverently through the history of western art.
MEG & MOG, the much
loved series of books which Jan created with Helen Nicoll, has reached
19 main titles and 3 novelty titles. Four of them became the MEG & MOG Show,
exuberantly staged by David Wood and designed for the West End by Jan.
MEG & MOG has recently been created into an animated television series
for CITV, directed by Roger Mainwood and featuring the voices of Fay Ripley
as Meg, Alan Bennet as Owl and Phil Cornwall as Mog.
Jan by Paul Wuensche |
Jan At Work |
Jan by Satoshi Kitamura |
| Visit the Studio for more portraits of Jan. |
||
His
lifelong interest in stage design landed other commissions: two shows
for Theatre de Complicite, then Beauty and the Beast for The Royal Ballet,
Covent Garden and a spectacular Sleeping Beauty at Disneyland, Paris.
Jan works at home, in his attic studio overlooking the River Thames, and these days writes and draws his books directly onto computer. Whenever he can, he likes being out of doors.
Some people struggle to pronounce the Polish name Pieńkowski correctly.
Listen to Maureen Lipman pronounce Jan's name
© Copyright 2000 by Jan Pieńkowski - All rights reserved
MEG & MOG characters © Copyright Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski