This Kingston School of Art registration card from 1940 demonstrates the extraordinary youth of some of the students during this wartime period. Daphne Elizabeth Beacon lived locally on Kingston Hill, and begun her studies at the art school on the Junior Craft Course aged just 13 years and 9 months. In 1946, Daphne went on to the RCA whilst still a teenager. There she met her future husband, the artist Max Brooker. After spells working as a model, a theatre designer, and as a lecturer at Walthamstow School of Art, Daphne Brooker, as she was now known, rejoined Kingston School of Art in 1962 to teach in the Fashion department. She would lead the department on to unprecedented success over the next 30 years.

Many thanks to Daphne’s daughter Caroline for granting permission to publish this image.