Jann Haworth was the artist who made the Sgt Pepper cover. She will happily always say that it was 50/50 between her and her husband at the time, Peter Blake, but her name should always go first in that collaboration. And instead she is so often not mentioned.
This is not one of those things where it was his work and she just helped a little. In some accounts I've read, Robert Fraser originally brought the project to both of them. She was a known and brilliant artist who knew Robert well, and had already exhibited at his gallery, so it would make sense. She freely gives Peter credit for the idea of it, the idea of the crowd of heroes behind the beatles, but she suggested they do it in her style not his - ie as standing silhouettes, rather than paper collage - which meant she had the experience and the skills to create the thing. She came up with the floral arrangements so it wouldn't be ruined with graphics. She did the vast majority of the work.
She's super well adjusted about the whole thing, she tends to set people right about it just when they claim she's copying his work, rather than continuing her own in her more recent pieces. You can read interviews with her here, here, or here.
One of my litmus tests for beatles books is whether they mention her at all. They don't mostly, because they'd rather die than actually question anything. But if you think it wasn't known until more recently then know that George Martin in 'Summer of Love' in 1995 credits her fully as a co-creator. It was never a secret.
"Along with the Pepper tableaux cloth figures, Jann Haworth came up with a number of other original ideas for the venture. [...] She said that it would be very nice not to have real lettering on the Sgt Pepper cover but to do something like that kind of civic flower-bed lettering. [...] Jann spent a long time building a background, a scene against which the Beatles would be photographed, hanging the first row of photos on the studio wall, then fixing the other blow-ups on poles and spacing them in tiers at intervals of a foot or so, to give the picture the illusion of depth. Haworth also did all the hand tinting of the original black and white photographs."
Summer of Love, George Martin
(Most of the sites where I found pictures of the Sgt Pepper making, DO NOT NAME HER as being involved, much less credit her in photos, but here she is, creating the album cover with her bare hands, while Peter Blake stands around.)
I know none of this is news to anyone much around here. I just needed to rant about it, having seen this quote that @eppysboys posted, from peter blake. It's just hilarious to me that he's complaining about the lack of money, after he's benefited from all the fame and credit for it over the years, and meanwhile she's left out of the story entirely... it's just so incredibly male of him. Any time he doesn't immediately set his interviewer straight about how that album cover was made is a disgrace. (Also his whining that he's only remembered for Sgt Pepper is a lot like when John would whine that people played Yesterday to him... if you're going to try and take ALL the credit for something, you can't complain when people tell you their favourite bit was the bit your partner was responsible for.)
