Vintage 50s fabrics

Mary White enjoyed a reputation in the 1950s as one of the leading mid-century fabric, textile and pattern designers of the era. She was prolific in her design creation between 1950 until 1957. In the 1950s she worked as a textile designer contracted with the design studio of David Whitehead, which included other designers and artists such as John Barker, Afro Basaldella, Eileen Bell, Gerald Downes, J. Feldman, Barbara Pile, Humphrey Spender, Robert Tierney, Lisa Gronwall and Maj Nilsson. White was designing during the same period as British textile designer, Lucienne Day.

To create her designs White drew on the work of William Morris, books of flowers and the countryside where she grew up and has lived throughout her life. In turn her work has influenced leading fashion icons such as Mary Quant, Laura Ashley and Sir Terence Conran. Many of White's designs are exhibited in museums all over the world including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Warner Textile Archive in Essex and the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. White's textiles were used on the RMS Queen Mary ocean liner and in Heathrow Airport (as curtains and coverings)

Initially, Lucienne Day started out designing fabric for dresses, but she found working in the fashion industry not to her taste. A 1948 commission would prove to be her big break, allowing her to leap from fashion fabrics to upholstery. It was that year she received a commission from Alastair Morton at Edinburgh Weavers. Her designs for the company caught the attention of powerful home furnishings company Heals, and sent her career into high orbit.

The patterns Day designed in the 1950s tended to be highly graphic and energetic. On the surface they appear simple, but scrutiny reveals that they are made up of layers of different patterns, designed to be practical and appeal both close up and at a far distance. They were printed using screen printing, wherein the patterns on printed on the fabric using mesh screens, one color at a time.

Day's 1951 Calyx fabric would become one of her best-known works. During this time she and her husband had a commission to work on the newly built Royal Festival Hall and its Homes and Gardens Pavilion. They decided to use her previously designed Provence wallpaper, but they also needed fabric for seating. She created Calyx for that specific purpose. It was designed after botanical fabrics, but it was far more stylized and abstracted. It even won an American Institute of Directors Award in the United States.

From Rachel Tustin for Study.com and Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Credits: Vintage fabrics, Mary White, Lucienne Day and others