Replica of a Lucienne Day Pattern

My Replica of a Lucienne Day Pattern.

This is the image I'll be using for my replica piece.

I took this picture from the book ' Vintage Patterns 1950's by Marnie Fogg, Batsford 2013 where it is listed as pattern name "Ducatoon" but on further research I believe it to be ' Cadenza' which Day produced for Heals 1962. This information, and the following picture, I took from the book ' Robin and Lucienne Day: Pioneers of Contemporary Design' by Lesley Jackson, Octopus Books 2011. As this book is specific to them and the author knew the couple and had access to their archives I believe ' Cadenza' to be correct.

This brown and mustard version is also upside down in Lesley Jackson's book. In any event, I only discovered this peculiarity after I had made the replica blue version. It is still a  Lucienne Day pattern and does show, as with many pattern motifs, the versatility of any way being up.

So, to proceed,

I decided to make this image in a collage fashion as , looking closely, the individual pieces lent themselves to being cut-out shapes. The main squares appear to sit on top of the coloured background with rounded corners and unaligned edges.

I painted papers for the blues,lilac and plain browns in shades of various mixtures of Acrylic Paint with Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Powder Blue, Process Blue, Process Magenta, Phthalo Blue and Black.

For the striated brown paper,  I dry-brushed a mix of Burnt Umber and Raw Sienna onto white paper.
I then , using the edge of a wooden knife, printed Burnt Umber and Black lines on top.

Next step was to make up a motif template. The pattern itself consists of an area with 3 x 4 individual blocks.

I cut out the white blobs with white paper first, then the background squares from the coloured papers.

Continuing all the way along the pattern and adding the little inner coloured blobs.

I like to place all the pieces dry to get a feel for the image before committing to the gluing stage.

After making the pattern, I decided to add half a repeat to the right hand side to give a bigger view.

I then had to think about the inky black marks and how to control the repeat image.

I found these items about the house and gave them a wee test.

I used PVA to glue the white blobs and any inner pieces together and, when dry, overprinted them with the button etc and some paint marks.

Once all the pieces had been inked up and dry;

I used PVA to glue all the individual blocks together and then the blocks to the background. I left them to dry under a weight to stop curling edges.

Once dry the completed image is now ready to be framed.