japantastic

I took a trip down memory lane yesterday when I visited the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture at Middlesex University's Cat Hill campus; I was a student on the constructed textiles course there when it was built in 2000 and it was a great resource. The museum is a little gem if you are interested in interiors or textiles, with a fabulous and extensive collection of artefacts which you can use for reserch or just for inspiration.

The current exhibition is called Japantastic and is small but perfectly formed. There are beautiful Japanese inspired textiles fom the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, when there was a craze for all things relating to Japan. The wallpapers and fabric were produced by the Silver Studio, who supplied designs to Liberty.

I would highly recommend that you get down to see this exhibition if you can and if you haven't been before, check out the permanent exhibition Exploring Interiors about domestic living from the early twentieth century. There are some fabulous pieces, including a stunning singer sewing machine cabinet, which I could easily have walked out of there with if it wasn't so darned heavy....

i love lucienne day

It was a sad moment when I heard the news of Lucienne Day's passing last week, so I felt I must write a little about why she was such an creative inspiration to me. I had the great priviledge of hearing her talk about her career a few years ago, while I was studying textiles at the Royal College of Art. She must have been the grand age of 86, but stood for a couple of hours talking eloquently about her fascinating work, her life and her husband and also held a questions and answers session, throughout which the passion she held for design and textiles was still very much in evidence.


Although she is extremely well known for her fifties and sixties prints, such as the infamous Calyx (top), which hung at the Festival of Britain in 1951, she talked most about the tapestries which held her interest for most of the latter part of her life, and were very beautiful. She was an inspiration of a designer, working with a great creative drive, right into her final years, yet also with a solid home life as a mother to her daughter and wife and occasional collaborator to her husband of over sixty years, Robin Day.

Robin is a furniture deisgner and for those of you who do not know, he designed the ubiquitous polypropylene chairs we all grew up with, sitting on at school, in church halls and pretty much everywhere mass seating was needed. The couple rarely collaborated on the same projects, but their pieces worked harmoniously together, as with Calyx, which hung in Robin's display at the Festival of Britain, and in this great photo from the Design Museum of their house. I would move in tomorrow - what a stylish and classic yet cosy pad!


The pair met at an RCA dance in the forties, which is a lovely reflection of how I met my own partner. Although I am also a textiles designer and a RCA graduate, I can only hope to achieve her success and level of creativity and prolific output. Her designs were truly groundbreaking at the time and even now, although they are very familiar and well worn, they do not look dated, with similar designs continuing to be replicated in contemporary interiors. In fact, her designs are still being produced by companies such as Heals, with whom she worked for long periods.

One of the aspects of her own and Robin's ethos which I most identify with, similar to William Morris' Arts and Craft Movement, which she also admired, is the idea of great design for the masses at affordable prices. Usually this is a contradiction which connot be reconciled, but the Days managed it with style.

A sad truth is that most ideas and avenues in textiles have been explored today, so it is unlikely that we shall ever see such a startlingly new and groundbreaking textiles designer again, so Lucienne will be sadly missed. However, her designs, I believe will be relevant for many, many years to come.

recycling

Way back when I first graduated from my MA in textiles and was looking for employment, I whiled away my days cutting up and embroidering old jumpers or making them into toys. This week I have found myself pining for that theraputic activity and with a good three boxes of old woollen jumpers which I just cannot resist accumulating, I thought it was about time I did something with them. Here are some of the fruits of my labour;

I have gotten a little bit obsessed with bows in these, but hey, who doesn't love a bow?! The pink jumper is cashmere, bought in a little shop in San Francisco, from which I could've filled whole suitcases with buttery soft second hand cashmere goodies.

Well, the current climate is calling for sustainability and recycling, and these jumpers fit the brief, which is just as well, as now I have way too many bow-laden woollies to wear myself!

I shall pop them on my website when it has undergone its revamp later this month, and in the meantime will be hauling a pile of them to the We Make London fair this weekend.

making the most of the summer

It is still the summer hols from my work at the college, so I have been making the most of it by getting out and about in town, seeing exhibitions, enjoying the weather and knitting on the bus on my way round.

This week I saw the latest offering from Contemporary Applied Arts in Percy Street, Inner Voice. Some very interesting and intricate jewellery pieces were on show and I particularly liked Helen Carnac's recycled pieces, embellished with hand sewing and drawing.

On the bus I have been trying my hand at double knitting, a way of stranding multicoloured knitting to get a reversible fabric. I adore the final, double-warm, squishy fabric it produces but, oh my, it is so time consuming. I think I manage about one or two lines per bus journey.

It is part of my new Autumn range so here is a sneak peak of some of the colours you can expect.