Exploring Textiles: Assignment 4: An In-depth Study

Lucienne Day (An In-depth Study)

In 1951, at The Festival of Britain, a post-war nation eagerly embraced Lucienne Day’s modern fresh designs. The exhibition attracted millions of people and launched Day’s reputation internationally.

One design in particular, Caylx, was a favourite with the public and a financial success for its manufacturer, Heal Fabrics. Ironically Heal’s felt the design was too revolutionary and modern, but Day tenaciously believed in it so a compromise was reached with the manufacturer only paying half the usual design fee (although the full amount was paid later).

(http://lottyblue.co.uk/2011/vintage-interior-designers-robin-and-lucienne-day)

Luckily the design’s success cemented the relationship and Day continued to work as a freelancer for Heal’s for over 20 years, producing more than 70 furnishing fabric designs. Day was one of very few designers who had their name printed along their designs.

Caylx was a design which looked to the future, Day herself described the piece as giving a ‘sense of growth’. It moved furnishing fabrics away from floral Chintz of the time in to a new forward-thinking positive approach. The graphical shapes and structure of the piece was a far cry from the gentle curves of more fauna and flora the public had been used to. A bold but cleverly limited colour palette was used which kept the design cost effective. The detail was achieved by using patterns within the shapes making the design more intricate.

Day was designing for her customer’s lifestyle where colour was used as a statement. Replicating the design in different colourways extended the influence of the design to suit a range of colour tastes. To Day the way the colourways worked was an extremely important part of the design process.

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=37949

Day drew inspiration from artists she had studied at The Royal College of Art such as Paul Klee, Joan Miro and Kandinsky, they all used colour in a strong, vibrant manner. In this Joan Miro painting (left) entitled The Escape Ladder (1940) you can see the use on linear and block shapes together to create movement and interest in the piece. This is also using a very limited colour palette which enhances the drama.

Day’s sudden elevation to international success was not achieved overnight. After she left college in 1940 she taught and when the war finished she set up as a freelancer designing dress fabrics, by this time she had been married to the furniture designer Robin Day for four years. She met Robin at The Royal College of Art and they shared a common passion for modern design which was reflected in their own lifestyle. They furnished their houses with their own designs showcasing the look which could be achieved.

Day moved away from dress fabrics to designing less seasonally-led furnishing fabrics. Lesley Jackson in an article for The Independent says Day was ‘appalled by the rudeness of the buyers in the Manchester rag trade’. Day’s aim along with that of her husband’s to be a freelancer and in 1948 she won a commission with Alistair Morton of The Edinburgh Weavers.

The Edinburgh Weavers had a history of working with new artists and designers, they collaborated with 150 artists from 1931 to Morton’s death in 1963. Day was in good company with her commission as previous artists had included Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicolson. The firm was highly influential in leading textiles design exhibiting at the V&A’s ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition in 1946.

Florimel (1949, image from V&A online collection)

In Florimel, Day has drawn on her love of botany, which inspired her designs throughout her life. The early work is more traditional and feminine but still had a contemporary feel. The designs produced for The Edinburgh Weavers were noticed by Tom Worthington from Heal’s and lead to a long collaboration with Day spanning decades.

The inspirations behind Day’s designs were common place, not elitist, the consumer could relate to the imagery used: herbs, owls, moths, & garden plants. This ethic was important to Day and her husband to enable their look to have a mass market appeal. There is a conscience decision to limit the colour palette in their work which meant the designs were less expensive and easier to reproduce.

By working as a freelancer, Day was able to work for a variety of manufacturers who would promote her designs in an accessible way. Heal’s prided themselves on issuing catalogues to the public with inspiring designs. The early 1950s saw both Days reach fame both individually and as ‘the British design couple’ although they rarely collaborated together professionally, their homes and lifestyle were of interest to the public.

Throughout the 1950s the couple were featured in many glossy magazine articles, in 1954 they even appeared in a Smirnoff Vodka campaign with both their furniture and textiles in the background. Post-war Britain was ready to embrace forward thinking designers and Lucienne and Robin epitomized the feeling of the time for a new generation.

The photograph to the left shows a room set by the Days at the Milan Triennale, 1951, at this exhibition Lucienne won a Gold Medal for her Caylx furnishing fabric design. It is easy to see why the couple are linked together after they collaborated on the sets which were to launch their careers.

However for most of their professional lives they worked independently. In the 1950s working women were not the norm, especially freelancing designing women and often Lucienne Day’s work has been described as secondary to that of her husband, so whilst rewarding to be part of a famous couple, it sometimes lessened her reputation as a sole designer.

As previously mentioned, Day was prolific in her work with many British Manufacturers and her freelancing relationships did not stop with Heal’s. She was interested in designing for new fabrics and worked with British Celanese on developing designs using new man-made fibres.

V&A collection

http://collections.vam.ac.uk

Up to this point she had worked with natural fibres, with her commission for British Celanese she worked on acetate rayon taffeta, a low cost fabric. She was commissioned to produce six designs for the company including ‘Climbing Trees’ (right) and Palisade (left), both produced in 1952.

They are both very linear designs and have a slightly less painterly style than Day’s Heal’s designs of the time. The have a more cartoon element to them which is achieved through the emphasis of line rather than pattern.

Quadrile, 1952 British Celanese(Whitworth Art Gallery

Day’s work rate through the 1950s was high and she in demand not just from furnishing manufacturers, but carpet, wallpaper and ceramic firms. Day said she looked upon textiles design as an ‘element of interior design’ not simply a standalone discipline, a view which helped the longevity of her career. Branching out in to new areas proved extremely worthwhile for design and manufacturers alike, it seemed the public couldn’t get enough of her stylish designs.

Day’s reputation internationally was enhanced with her overseas work and she was asked to sit on many design juries at this time.

In 1959 Thomas Somerset, an Irish Linen Company, asked Day to design a range of kitchen tea towels.

This commission allowed Day to look at more quirky, humorous designs to delight the consumer and give a statement piece in the household environment of the kitchen.

She worked for Thomas Somerset until 1969, winning Design Centre Awards, the designs proved extremely popular and are still being sold in retro stores today. Again the strong use of a limited colour palette is distinctive in Day’s work, produced in pure linen they enabled her to design without discipline of looking at a design which needs to have a repeat pattern.

'Batterie de Cuisine' pure linen 73 x 48 cm (left).

In addition to furnishing fabrics, Day also designed wallpaper which had been hand-printed by John Line and Cole & Son. In the design on the right (Provence 1951) the modern contemporary feel Day was aiming to achieve flows through piece. The design is in more muted tones than her furnishing fabrics intended to give more statement to the background of a room.

Furrows 1958 for Tomkinsons (Whitworth Art Gallery)

Day also worked with a German company, Rasch & Crown, who were machine wallpaper manufacturers. The imagery in the design was on a smaller scale and even more limited colour range than her furnishing fabrics. See opposite Prisma 1955 – Rasch wallpaper Whitworth Collection online.

In 1957 Day won another Design Centre Award for her carpet pattern, Tesserae, for Tomkinson’s Carpets which was a mosaic abstract design. In her designs for Tomkinsons, Day showed a heavy influence from the Bauhaus. This influence is particularly evident in the block colours in the weave and subtle use of colour.

Right is Furrows produced in 1958 which gives an example of the influence mentioned.

Day quickly gained a justifiable reputation of a designer who understood the substrates and limitations of manufacturer – something which is invaluable to ensure mass market production.

Day’s lifestyle designs continued with a commission in 1957 by German ceramics company, Rosenthal. In the image opposite her love of bold linear graphics is used in a more subtle way on white ceramics resulting in a very popular tableware collection.

www.classictextiles.com

Lucienne herself said in 1957: “In the very few years since the end of the war, a new style of furnishing fabrics has emerged…. I suppose the most noticeable thing about it has been the reduction in popularity of patterns based on floral motifs and the replacement of these by non-representational patterns – generally executed in clear bright colours, and inspired by the modern abstract school of painting… Probably everyone’s boredom with wartime dreariness and lack of variety helped the establishment of this new and gayer trend.” (© Design Museum + British Council, 2010)

Whilst Lucienne Day’s designs are very distinctive she was influenced with the trends at the time and there is a clear move away from linear patterns to more abstract shapes in her work throughout the 1960s. Her use of colour becomes more vibrant and the patterns bigger and bolder.

Larch in 1961 is a much large repeat pattern than Day’s 1950’s designs.

Design Council Slide Collection

Big Circle, produced in 1963 (image from the Design Council Slide collection), for I&C Steele carpet manufacturer shows how large and bold her designs had become.

In 1967 Lucienne and Robin collaborated together on an airline projects for BOAC, designing the interiors for cabins and lounges for a variety of different aeroplanes.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk

They continued to work with BOAC until the early 1970s.

Poinsettia design (right for Heal Fabrics in 19660) is a stronger and starker design than usual for Day. The work is much less linear and relies on strong different shaped blocks of colour to create the shapes. The very simplistic white background is very much a move away from the 1950s designs.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk

Another striking design in 1969 was Sunrise, also for Heal’s. The whole design is clear colour blocks no linear imagery is left from the 1950s designs. The gold/olive angled stripes in the centre give the pattern movement from one side to the other which pulls the viewer in to the design and makes them look at the definition of the shapes.

Unfortunately when Britain hit a recession in the 1970s the public’s taste for Day’s work was also reduced. Undaunted she moved in to a different sphere and at the age of 58 Day started to create silk mosaic hangings. These one-off commissions moved away from the mass market arena which was once her forte. Between 1979 – 1991 Day produced 144 silk mosaic hangings.

Aspects of the Sun (right) in John Lewis’s Espresso bar in Kingston Upon Thames.

http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk

The piece took nearly two years to complete and is 16ft by 9ft 6 inches. The top panel contains 8,500 mosaic pieces. (John Lewis Partnership 5 March 2010, by Jacqueline Mair) Lucienne and Robin were design consultants for the John Lewis Partnership for 25 years until 1987. Their influence on design both one off commissions and mass market is unique in 20th Century.

It has been said that Lucienne Day brought ‘colour to a grey post-war Britain’ through her designs and inspiration in quality of lifestyle.

However her influence should not just be limited to post-war, she continued to inspire new ideas and designs through the later decades of the 20^th century. In fact copies of her patterns can still be seen in the fashion industry today.

Assignment 4: An In-depth Study

Blog Archive