† DENNIS ENDEAN IVALL, SHA — Heraldic/Bookplate Artist and Illustrator
Dennis was born in Essex in 1921. He went from grammar school to work at ICI for a short while before going off to war where he saw service in India, Burma, Ceylon, and the Cocos Islands. After demobilisation he attended South-west Essex Art School and later London University gaining a National Design Diploma and a Art Teaching Diploma. He went to Devon where he spent the next twenty years teaching art at Barnstaple Boys School until he retired and became a professional artist. He moved to his mother’s county of Cornwall and established his studio and home near Truro.
Heraldic art was his great passion, and he carried out the design and painting of coats of arms for many clients across the world. He was the author of the book Cornish Heraldry and Symbolism and, among the work he carried out in Cornwall, was the painting of the organ panels at Cuby church, the repainting of the coat of arms at St. Dennis after the fire and the design and painting of a banner for St. Agnes and, of course, the banner of St. Piran in this church.
Heraldry and his military service gave rise to an interest in army insignia and badges and, with Professor Charles Thomas, he was the author and illustrator of Military Insignia of Cornwall. He was a founder member of the Cornwall Militaria Group, and a long serving member of the Perranarworthal branch of the British Legion.
His enthusiasm for heraldry led Dennis to join the Order of St. Lazarus, an international charitable order founded in the Holy Land. He was a member of the Commandery of Avalon in the West Country, and became Judge of Arms of the Commandery, of the Bailiwick of England and then of the whole order worldwide, attaining the rank of Knight Grand Cross.
His other great interest was family history, and in his research over the years he succeeded in tracing his Ivall ancestors back to the seventeenth century in Hampshire, and his Endean ancestors in Cornwall back to the fifteenth century. He was a founder member of the Cornwall Family History Society, a committee member for a number of years and, among his projects for the Society, he and Irene recorded and plotted all the memorial inscriptions in Perranarworthal churchyard. He also studied the Cornish language, becoming a bard of the Cornish Gorseth, and served on the Gorseth Council.
Although he was such a talented artist, with a worldwide clientele, he was always ready to lend his talents to local activities, whether painting scenery for Carnon Downs Drama Group, drawing posters for the Women’s Institute or touching up the lettering on the war memorial.
His lifelong interest in heraldry and symbolism, coupled with his Cornish background led to his instantly recognisable Celtic Art style so evident in his bookplate design. He wrote and illustrated two books, Cornish Heraldry and Symbolism and Cornish Military Insignia, and designed heraldic illustrations and bookplates for clients throughout the world. It seems quite strange that Dennis was not commissioned to design his first bookplate until 1981, his sixtieth year. After that, his designs were increasingly sought after by bookplate collectors and commissioning book owners alike.