Stan Cooper Prints

Stan was born in London in 1915. His father was a railway guard and his mother took in occasional washing. In childhood, he was given the nickname Kip, because he was tall and thin with long, narrow feet, hence Kipper Cooper, or Kip for short.

He left school at 14, but continued going to evening classes for a number of years, and studied for a degree, though he left before finishing the course because he needed the money to get married.

He worked for a number of electrical firms before ending up as a street lighting specialist for Siemens by the time he married Gladys Beckett in 1939.

He was a conscientious objector during the war and became an agricultural worker, rather than being assigned work in a munitions factory.

In 1945, Stan and Gladys opened a youth hostel on the Isle of Wight, moving after a few years to open one in Oxfordshire, followed by stints running hostels in Arundel, Bristol and Swanage in Dorset.

After a few more moves, and various occupations, including back at Siemens in London, it was decided Stan would train as a teacher. He took advantage of a government scheme which offered 2 year training courses to mature students, because of a shortage of teachers following the war, and he found himself at Padgate in Lancashire.

His training was to be a primary school teacher, but he ended up as an art specialist, having discovered a love for the subject. When he qualified, the family moved to Staffordshire, where he worked as an art teacher in secondary schools for twenty years.

Stan and Gladys moved to Suffolk after retirement and this is where he developed his skills as a lino printmaker. He adored the Suffolk landscape, and many of his prints are based on photographs he took during walks in the countryside.

He went to France for the first time for his 70th birthday, and immediately fell in love with the country and its culture. He and Gladys would visit at least once a year, and many of his larger prints are inspired by what he saw there.

Stan eventually stopped making art in the mid-1990s, and died in 2010.