Silk Mosaics

Silk Mosaics.

Here are a few of Lucienne Day's Silk Mosaic works..

Palace of Peking 1 & 11 ,(1979), (www.artvalue.com)

  This mosaic takes the form of a map, with rooms, buildings and walkways. It is quite simple in its approach and appears to be more of a study representing the Palace than an imagined piece. I think the flat blocks of colour make it more map-like but I would like to see it with more variety of shades within the blocks to hold my visual attention more. 

The Window, (1986), (www.gac.culture.gov.uk) 

This piece was commissioned from the artist in June 1986 and belongs to the Government Art Collection and is located in the British Embassy, Kiev, Ukraine. It measures 134.50 cm in length and 174.50 cm width.

This piece, for me, represents the light and the shapes they play against a wall as they enter the window through the passage of time. There is a bit more variety of colour within each of  the blocks and so I feel has given the work more depth. I would still prefer less pink but is a personal preference. 

Wallpaper Magazine Cover January 2009
Golden Tangram, a limited edition cover.
(www.wallpaper.co.uk)

This is one of my favourites and, as I love to sew, would be something I would like to try when I have the time. The greens and browns, mustard yellow and purple are especially well-balanced for my taste. With the mix of squares and rectangles, I think, this gives the work more movement and makes it appear less flat, less 2D and more 3D. I imagine a plain wall and this blaze of colour hitting the senses as you approach.  

Three Daughters of Mexico, (1995).(www.vads.ac.uk)

This piece is part of the Royal College of Art Collection and measures 1450 mm x 1880 mm.

As yet, I have not found out who or what the Daughters represent other than their literal title. If we assume being daughters and family is the theme then this piece works well. The panels are all individual but carry elements between the three such as colour, pattern and geometric shapes which, to me,conveys the genetic link and as an ensemble piece represents the family. I like the symbolism and the shapes, not so keen on the colours.

Aspects of the Sun, (1990), (designmuseum.org)

This piece was produced for the John Lewis Partnership.

This is one of the best pieces in my opinion. The sheer size and scale are impressive, the amount of work and dedication required to bring this artwork to life is breathtaking.  The aspects of the subject matter chosen are well-represented. The colours fit perfectly, the eclipse segment being particularly stunning. Knowing that all these apparent perfect spheres are made from square blocks of colour is an achievement worthy of praise.  

Patterns and textiles of Lucienne Day

Patterns and Textiles of Lucienne Day.  

Here are a small collection of Lucienne Day's creations, some you might recognise but, I hope, some that are new to you.

It is very difficult to critique someone's work whom you admire and respect. So far, I haven't found any work I downright dislike; there are many I have a natural affinity for whether in shape, colour or production methods and others less so for the same reasons. I prefer fine lines like scratchy pen nib marks as opposed to thick marker shapes, greens, blues, purples as opposed to red, pink,orange colours and space around motifs. ( I prefer tubes of blue smarties to pink ones.)

Art and pattern are very much in the eye of the beholder. (A good thing, I believe, or we'd all have the same pictures on the wall and very little work as creators; if at times, the public or critics choices seem hard to comprehend.) Whether a work stands or falls can also be about being in the right place at the right time. A well executed piece worthy of artistic merit can sometimes fall initially due to outside influences or impatience on the part of viewers particularly if a new innovation or you may be fortunate and catch the imagination of the public, your work be what the world is waiting for and receive the accolades you deserve.

So here are a few samples and my own opinions.

Calyx, Heals, 1951. (origininteriors.org)

 

Calyx (Blue) (www.classictextiles.com)

 This is one of my favourite patterns. I love the original olive green version as it comes in other colourways but they don't have the same wow factor for me. It has a large repeat which lends itself to not being visually tiring and has an open aspect, space to move if you will. It must have been such a surprise to see it first at the Festival of Britain.

Spectators, Heals, 1953 (www.classictextiles.co.uk)

 This is a bold image with the striking contrast of red and white on a black ground. The long thin stylised people draw your eye the length of the piece. I think, as the red and black are quite strong, you wouldn't require anything more than neutral wall-coverings. As a spectacle wearer myself you've got to love the spiky haired guy.

Larch, Heals, 1961 (blog.modernica)

Larch ,Heals, 1961 (www.classictextiles)

 There are a number of tree study patterns in her collection which I find enjoyable. Larch is quite a realistic representation. I like the spiky quality of each tree stretching forth and leaving the confines of it's block of colour just like a grove of trees.

Sequoia, Heals, 1959 (www.classictextiles)

 This pattern is another favourite and comes in many colourways, eg blue and green. This pattern has large simple blocks of colour and the black line marks tell the whole story of trees growing.

Maquis, Heals, 1959 (www.ebay.co.uk)

This also came in different colourways. As a contrast to the Sequioa pattern the blocks are much thinner with many more varieties of marks representing the bark in a more abstract fluid form. I do like this pattern but would perhaps have liked to see the individual bark motifs on their own rather than a combination on some of them.

Quarto, Heals, 1960 (www.ebay.co.uk)

 This pattern appeals to the 'zentangle' in me. There is a design style of art, come to the fore in recent years, called 'zentangling' which is like fine line doodles , filling in shapes with more shapes and colours in a random fashion. Looking at some of Day's designs she seems to have been doing this before it was fashionable. In Quarto I love the vibrant blue colour and the almost crossword like  ( another personal favourite) motif shape. The small dash of teal green and white adding zing to the whole image.

Hope you like her work as much as I do.

 

Lucienne Day - A Pioneer in textile design

Lucienne Day

Lucienne Day ( www.pallant.org.uk)

" I wanted the work I was doing to be seen by people and used by people. They had been starved of interesting things for their homes in the war years"   Lucienne Day.

Early Life.


Born on the 5th of January 1917 in Surrey, Desiree Lucienne Conradi was the youngest of four and the only girl to Belgian, Felix Conradi, and his English wife, Dulcie. In 1934, aged 17, she attended Croydon School of Art, finding her niche in printed textiles. In 1937 she won a place to the Royal College of Art; Design Department. After a creatively stifling work placement at Sanderson Wallpaper, she was approached by Sekers Fabrics to produce sketches. This relationship ended when they refused to allow her to display one of her designs under her own name. The severing of this relationship demonstrated a display of independence and an example of her strong desire to be her own woman and owner of her creations. At this time, working practices decreed that designers were an extension of the company, therefore anonymous. This led to her decision to be a freelance designer.

Career.

In 1940, Lucienne met Robin Day, a fellow graduate of the Royal College of Art and a furniture and interior designer. They discovered a mutual love of design and a desire to establish a new, uncluttered modern style. Robin designed her Diploma Show stand, including an armchair produced by Heal's, to his own design, upholstered in her block-printed fabric.
One of the fabrics displayed was a horse's head motif, acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum, Circulation Department in 1939. This design was based on Chinese sculpture from the V&A, a regular study facility for the college. She was already being noticed.

Robin and Lucienne Day ( the 189.com)

Lucienne and Robin married in 1942. After leaving the auxiliary fire service due to ill health, Lucienne taught at Beckenham School of Art where she developed a course of study on colour theory. This led to Day making a BBC "Radio Broadcast to Schools" programme entitled " Making Patterns in Line and Colour". This programme was broadcast well into the 1950's.

In 1946 she set up in private practice but due to wartime rationing and restrictions, her work was mainly dress designs for Horrockses, Cavendish Textiles and Edinburgh Weavers. This association with Alastair Morton of Edinburgh Weavers led to her introduction to Heal's and, with his recommendation, she acted as honorary secretary to the Society of Industrial Artists, textile group (1948-1953).

"The Islanders" sculpture, Festival of Britain. (www.telegraph.co.uk)

In the 1951 Festival of Britain Exhibition, Lucienne provided dress fabric, wallpapers, upholstery fabric for the TeleKineme Auditorium and the furnishing fabric Calyx for the Homes and Gardens Pavilion. She persuaded Heal's to commission Calyx for the exhibition, but they were unsure of the modern style, so paid her half the fee. Calyx fabric had free-floating upward shaped cups, rising in various sizes, screen-printed on linen, using yellow, orange, black and white colours on an olive background. As the festival progressed and Calyx proved a success, Heal's decided to hail it a "revolution", paying the remainder of her fee.

Calyx ( on left)        Herb Antony (on right)  (www.the guradian.com)

In 1951, Calyx won the gold medal at the Milan Triennale and in 1952, won a citation of merit award from the American Institute of Decorators; the first time this award went outside of the USA.

This success led Heal's to launch Day as a star designer and begin to print her signature, along with the pattern title, on the selvedge of the fabric. This led to a long-standing partnership whereby Day chose the titles, subject, colour and treatment of her textiles, very unusual for the time. In over twenty five years she produced over seventy designs.

In 1954 Robin and Luciennes' daughter Paula was born. Robin Day, as a furniture and interior designer, was as famous as Lucienne. His seating designs for the Festival of Britain and association with Hille launched his career. His work was as sought after as Luciennes'. In 1959 he became a member of the Royal Designers in Industry, three years later Lucienne was awarded the same honour. One did not eclipse the other. They were not only hard working and skilled, they were elegant and stylish; even appearing in a Smirnoff Vodka advertisement in 1954, with Robin's furniture and Lucienne's fabrics in evidence. They were designers who happened to be a couple not a "designer couple". For the majority of their careers, they worked independently, only collaborating occasionally. Even as joint consultants, they each had their own area of expertise with companies such as the John Lewis Partnership 1962 - 1987 and BOAC 1967 - 1970. They had the same belief system in low-cost modern design and an appreciation for nature, giving their furniture and textile designs a natural harmony.

Throughout the 1950's and 1960's Day created a prolific portfolio. Among her other main clients were Tompkinsons (Axminster) and Royal Wilton for carpets, Crown and Rasch for wallpaper, Thomas Somerset for table linen and Rosenthal for ceramics.

Later Life

In 1975, age 58, due to the changing economy and the retirement of three of her main contacts, she decided to retire from industrial design and concentrate on a new creative direction; silk mosaics. These mosaic wall-hangings were geometric blocks of coloured silk which had been inspired by the pattern created by metal fire shutters in a John Lewis store. She changed her creative focus from mass-production to unique works of art. Even in retirement from 1979 to 1991, she produced an amazing 144 further exclusive pieces of art, most famous being "Aspects of the Sun" for the John Lewis Partnership in 1990.

www.designmuseum.com

In 1992 - 2002 she was The Textile Society's first honorary president, they now have the Lucienne Day Award for textile students. Although interest in her work had never entirely disappeared, she was able to witness a resurgence in her portfolio, with the launch of various exhibitions, such as the 1993 Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester : Lucienne Day, A Career in Design. Also, Habitat produced some of Day's designs for their 20th Century Legend Collection in 1999. In 2001, a retrospective of the couples work was held at the Barbican,,in London. Later, in 2003, she selected 12 patterns to be digital reprinted by Classic Textiles; Centre for Advanced textiles within the Glasgow School of Art.

At the age of 93, on the 30th of January 2010, she passed away.


Influence on the design world.

As the war years drew to a close and the populace looked to the future, the bright and bold prints of Lucienne Day, some with quirky lines such as Graphica, and others with a fresh look at nature's gifts, as seen in Calyx and Herb Antony cheered a nation and contributed to an optimistic frame of mind.

Graphica  (www.classictextiles.com)

As Day's designs proved more and more popular with the general public asking for her work by name, other designers, inspired, experimented with a new, modern eye to the shapes and colours of fabric and upholstery motifs. This popularity opened doors for the contemporary look proving the term " by popular demand" was not a myth.

Day's lasting popularity is due to her evolving and prolific style and design. Her main inspiration was colour and nature, particularly plants " the upward movement . . . . the sense of growth." Yet she continually expanded her horizons and did not confine her work to one particular genre. With various sizes and with subject matters ranging from flower heads, trees, simple or complex script, linear patterns, mobiles, overlaying printing, silk blocks of colour representing sun and weather, to name many, but not all.

Day contributed to the establishment of contemporary textile design, and by her example as a freelance designer, she paved the way for other artists, particularly women, to be taken seriously. for today's textile designers, such as Celia Birtwell, Orla Kiely and Cath Kidston, having your motifs and patterns recognised by name is normal and accepted practice. Lucienne Day was the first.

She produced patterns for clothing, products situated within every room in the home and large wall decoration; there was something for everyone. One of the most striking examples of longevity and continuing influence on the world is the use of the 1954 pattern " Trio" for Converse Trainers (2005).

"Trio"  (www.trueup.net)

The majority of those buying the trainers would have no knowledge of Lucienne Day or the fact the pattern on their new footwear came from the 1950's. This pattern has not aged and is as fresh today as it was when it was created and though she may be unknown to them, her work lives on.

If imitation is a true indication of popularity, it is a sad reflection of a long standing relationship that Heal & Son Limited decided to produce, without consultation, unapproved upholstery fabric variants of Calyx in the last years of Day's life. As a freelance designer, she retained rights to her designs, giving a few select companies permission to produce specific designs under licence. Lucienne and Robin Day's daughter, Paula, to preserve the legacy and integrity of her mother's work, took Heal & Son Ltd to court. The result being that Heals had to rename their product.

This courtroom battle has implications for designers in all creative arts, as they must work to understand the intellectual heritage of their own designs. The question of who owns the creative process and outcome is a serious one. The problem of reproduction by outside agencies, unaligned to oneself as the copyright holder, as well as the preservation and guardianship of a valued design culture is a problem for all artists.

Conclusion

Lucienne Day is an inspiration to me; a freelance designer with a large body of well received and sought after work. Her portfolio of rich, diverse and topical images, made her a woman first in the field of contemporary design. These achievements and may more besides, paved the way and broke the glass ceiling for female designers to control their own destiny. She was generous with her time and a mentor to other students. She raised the profile of design as a culture, retaining the rights to her work and thereby preserving the original intent and concept of her creations.

For me, I gain a great sense of pleasure, as well as a constant source of inspiration from her work. Her designs are happy and quirky, but not so abstract as to jar the senses. Her colour palette suits my temperament and her fine-line work, delicate and soothing, ensures even her boldest abstract work still has a relaxing quality. Each motif, separate, yet part of a larger whole, represent a body of work borne of a singular creative mind.

Last Word

As a fabric/textile artist and designer there can be no greater achievement than giving pleasure or a sense of wellbeing to another, by your own creation. Lucienne Day's portfolio of abstract designs has, for me, the Goldilocks touch; not too frenetic, not too stark . . . Just right.


Bibliography

Robin and Lucienne Day: Pioneers of Contemporary Design, Lesley Jackson. 2001/2011
Lucienne Day: Textile Designer whose work brightened up fifties Britain, Lesley Jackson: The Independent 13/2/2010 (Obituary)
The secret history of Lucienne Day's calyx fabric, Kate Watson-Smyth: The Independant 6/5/2011
Lucienne Day, Fiona MacCarthy: The Guardian 3/2/2010 (Obituary)
Farewell to Lucienne Day, Jonathan Glancy: 3/2/2010 The Guardian (Obituary)
www.brandrepublic.com/news
www.textilesociety.org.uk
www.pallanthousegallery.com
www.robinandluciennedayfoundation.org