My cousin Pauline Baines, who has died aged 103, was an independent and multitalented woman. Contrary to the path envisaged by her family she built a successful career, working for nearly 25 years as a book designer and art director at Thames & Hudson, her steady salary allowing her husband to pursue the more volatile path of an artist.
Pauline was born in Hove, East Sussex, to an observant Jewish family – her parents were Moses Behr, a chemist and businessman, and his wife, Sonia (nee Behr, a cousin). After they moved to north London, Pauline attended Brondesbury and Kilburn high school for girls, where she received a distinction in German. As the family were of limited means, and typically for the time, the education of her two brothers was prioritised over her desire to study languages at university. Pauline studied at Willesden Art School and the Central School of Art (now Central Saint Martins).
During the second world war she volunteered for the Red Cross. After the war she joined the Ministry of Information exhibitions department, and in 1951 worked on the Festival of Britain ship Campania, which took exhibitions to ports around the UK. It was during this time that she met her future husband, the artist and radical Harry Baines. He had been instrumental in bringing Picasso’s painting Guernica to Manchester in 1939. They married in 1952.
In 1958 Pauline joined Thames & Hudson as a book designer and later became the art editor. She was particularly proud of her work on the two-volume Honoré Daumier: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings, published in 1968. She remained at the publishers until her retirement in 1982.
Pauline, Harry and a group of like-minded friends commissioned the modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger to design a four-storey block of flats in Primrose Hill, north London, where they were all to live in a housing association with communal and separate facilities. They moved into 10 Regent’s Park Road in 1956 and Pauline was able to remain living there, the last of the original residents, until she died. The property is now a Grade II-listed building and Pauline’s flat has retained most of the original, ingenious, space-saving design.
A stalwart of the Primrose Hill Labour party as well as an active member of local community organisations, she was a lifelong Guardian reader. Pauline and Harry travelled extensively, particularly in India, Italy, France and Greece. She was fluent in a number of languages and was an accomplished cook. Her thirst for knowledge led her to attend classes in languages and literature into her late 90s.
Harry died in 1995. Pauline is survived by a nephew and two nieces.
