Oliver Percy Bernard OBE MC was an English architect, and scenic, graphic and industrial designer.
He was instrumental in developing conservative Victorian British taste in a modernist European
direction; much of his work is frequently characterised as art deco.
Born in Camberwell, London, Bernard was the son of Charles Bernard, (d.1894), a theatre manager,
and his wife, Annie Allen, an actress. Oliver Bernard experienced an unhappy childhood in London
and, on the death of his father in 1894, left for Manchester to take a job as a stagehand in a theatre.
There, he took on his own education by reading John Locke, John Ruskin and others. He ultimately
took a series of menial jobs at sea, before returning to London to take up scene painting with Walter
Hann.