Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain's leading theatre designer of the 1930s, '40s and '50s. He created settings and costumes for all forms of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well as working in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic concepts were perfectly in tune with the times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, that style was becoming unfashionable, and Messel gradually abandoned theatre and built a new career designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.

This photograph shows Oliver Messel working in his studio in London on the sphinx which would appear in the Jean Cocteau play The Infernal Machine. The production opened at the Arts Theatre, London on 5 September 1940 and starred Jeanne de Casalis as Jocasta, Peter Glenville as Oedipus and Leureen McGrath as the sphinx. Messel also designed the costumes and sets for the production. The photograph illustrates the approach Messel would apply to creating costumes and sets for a production, he was an expert mask maker and highly skilled in the use of materials for masks.