Book excerpt: The literary output of the Bloomsbury Group has been thoroughly scrutinized, but one major aspect of their activity has been neglected; their designs for the decorative arts. In this story the heroine is Vanessa Bell, whose house, Charleston, became a monument to the Omega Workshops. Started in London in 1913 by the art critic Roger Fry; the Omega workshops aimed to produce applied arts in the spirit of the Post-Impressionists. They were not a commercial success,closing in 1919, but the combined talents of Vanessa Bell, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mark Gertler, Frederick Etchells, McKnight Kauffer and Wyndham Lewis have a fresh and intense appeal eighty years later.