Seeing Red @ Tate Modern: London

Post-War British Textiles: LONDON

Apollo (detail) by Lucienne Day

Aquarius by Jacqueline Groag

Variation by Paule Vézelay

My textile tour of London continued with a visit to the Fashion and Textile Museum and their exhibit Designing Women: Post-War British Textiles. It was a total inspiration. The bleak days of World War II era England all but disappeared with the revolutionary new designs produced in 1950s Britain - many by women. Large scale, abstract patterns presented in vivid hues heralded a new day in design and no doubt helped raise the spirits of millions of people who now decorated their homes and adorned their bodies with these colorful textiles. The most prominent designer exhibited was Lucienne Day who made a significant impact on the design world with her 1951 pattern Calyx. Among the other designers included were Jacqueline Groag, Marian Mahler, and Paule Vézelay whose work I particularly admired.

In addition to being introduced to several new (to me) textile designers, I learned a great deal in a small, adjacent exhibit titled "Creating a Printed Textile with Sanderson".  Here, the many steps involved in creating a new textile were illustrated using Claire Hart's design "Hayward", pictured below.  I was particularly fascinated to learn more about the roller printing process having only practiced with screen printing.  With roller printing, the design is etched into large, heavy copper cylinders, or rollers (pictured below).  The cloth will then pass through several rollers, one for each color in the pattern.  While costly, the process allows for great lengths of fabric to be printed in a relatively short amount of time. 

So much inspiration!  I immediately bought a pack of colored pencils to start sketching on the plane.  Visit this museum, and when you do be sure to enjoy a very good cream tea in their café (teapod@FTM), and pop into their small, but lovely museum shop (where I scored an amazing vintage dress decorated with illustrations of the Queen's Coronation for my mum mom.  I'll share it in a future post, it's that fab!)

The Fashion and Textile Museum

83 Bermondsey Street

London

SE1 3XF

T: 020 7407 8664

www.ftmlondon.org

Selvedge Shop: LONDON

Selvedge Magazine has long been a source of inspiration to my work with textiles.  Each issue explores a range of subjects organized around a central theme.  It was the Britannia issue (#40) that taught me about the Queen Street Mill Museum, thought to be the last steam-driven weaving shed in the world (and location for the mill scene in the film The King's Speech).  My dog-eared issue React! (#09) contains the fantastic article "Painterly Patterns" that spurred my interest in early 20th-century artists working in pattern and textile design.

Needless to say, when I was planning my itinerary for my recent trip to London a visit to the Selvedge Shop topped the list.  A delayed flight from NYC meant that I had time to drop my luggage and hop a bus to Highgate with not a minute to spare (they are not open on weekends!).  The shop is small and fronts the editorial offices for the magazine.  Despite its size, the shop is filled with treasures: from a wonderfully curated selection of books and notions to bins of textiles and handmade items like the creatures by artist Tamar Mogendorff pictured above.  I highly recommend a visit.


Selvedge
162 Archway Road
London, N6 5BB
Open:  M-F 9:30 am - 5:30 pm

More pics of this textile-lovers dream shop after the jump.