I had collected her work over the years, and one holiday in Dorset, plucked up the courage to call and pay respects. She was out. The next year on our return, we found out she was dead. What a missed opportunity. Each book I found was in certain ways, slightly different but the colours, patterna and drawing, and in particular the intensive research for the National Trust commissions, immense. I have always urged students to find out more and relish her art.

In a world of the dull guidebook, her commissions for the National Trust stand out for their bold originality. She would spend a year on each book, drawing directly on the aluminium plate. She designed and printed the run (often 3,000) copies and even packaged them up for dispatch to her client.

She was trained in autolithography at Kingston School of Art, and became an art teacher at Bornemouth School for Girls. When the School moved to new premises in 1960, she painted a huge mural commemorating the old school. For the last 30 years of her life she worked in Thatched Cottage (Water Meadow Cottage) in Tarrant Monkton, her centre of production.

My original text," Rena Gardiner's books at the Workshop Press in Blandford Forum in Dorset are magnificent productions providing well researched and drafted texts with lavish lithographic images. Instead of finicky details, photographs or fashionable smears, the images (many of Dorset archaelogy and architecture) are painterly and radical without losing meaning and significance.
 
Designed, drawn, printed and published by Rena Gardiner at the Workshop Press, The Thatch Cottage, Tarrant Monkton, Blandford Forum, Dorset.... Printed on Precision Offset paper and Ivorex boardon a Gestelith 201 Press. Type hand-set in 12 point Gill Sans Serif." Some of the books have been distributed through the National Trust. "
 

EXHIBITION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF READING. See also Andrews, Martin. Rena Gardiner and the Workshop Press, Printmaking Today, v. 2, no. 4, Winter 1993, pp. 24-5.