Omar textile design, Charles Townsend

Omar textile design, Charles Townsend, 1898. Museum no. E.593-1974

Textile design entitled 'Omar'
Charles Townsend
Great Britain
1898
Pencil, watercolur and bodycolour
Width 22.8 cm x height 24.3 cm
Museum no. E.593-1974

Processes and Techniques

This design for a woven double cloth is partly based on a Persian motif of tulips and leaf shapes, hence the name 'Omar' (after the twelfth-century Persian poet Omar Kyayyam).  The pattern is composed of one pattern unit consisting of a fully-opened tulip and three tulip buds on a leaf shape with a plant stem which forms a vertical closure to the pattern unit on both of its sides. The pattern unit marked 'A' is turned through 180 degrees to give a horizontal mirror repeat marked 'B'.  This can be seen in the coloured horizontal mirror repeat. In this coloured repeat, the fully-opened, orange tulips in profile in each pattern unit appear to make a single, orange flower divided by the vertical, blue plant stem.  The tulips which face inwards mirror each other to make a symmetrical motif which is actually formed from the horizontal mirror repeat of the pattern unit. The designer arranged this pattern into what is known as a brick repeat variant with a horizontal mirror repeat.  He only finished one horizontal mirror repeat in watercolour and outlined the others in pencil which is enough to show how the brick repeat works. On the bottom row, the designer moved the pattern unit a whole unit to the right.  Each pattern unit is therefore to the right of the same pattern unit on the top row.  In this way, the designer created a sense of variety in the design which makes it a variant on the brick repeat.

The design is for a double cloth, in silk and wool, to be woven on the loom. A double cloth is a textile produced by weaving two cloths one above the other, on the same loom.  These are bound together by binding warp or weft threads.  An important reason for the production of double cloths is that a heavier cloth than could be made in a single texture can be achieved without spoiling the fineness and weave of the face cloth (the side of the cloth which is to appear uppermost).  Double cloths can be used for upholstery and this design is probably intended for that purpose.

The Designer

Charles Harrison Townsend was born in Birkenhead on 13 May 1851 and died in Northwood , Middlesex on 26 December 1928.  He was an English architect and designer.  He was educated at Birkenhead School and articled to the Liverpool architect Walter Scott (about 1811-1875) in 1870.  Townsend is best known as an architect who designed churches and the Horniman Museum and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, both in London.  This design has some of the characteristics of British Art Nouveau. Yet Townsend, as a member of the Arts and Crafts movement, would have rejected any connection between his work and continental Art Nouveau because he shared with members of the Arts and Crafts movement a belief in 'truth to materials'. They believed in honesty of construction, traditional forms and appropriate and sparing ornament.  The Arts and Crafts Movement was an informal combination of architects, designers and craftsmen who shared the ideals of Pugin, John Ruskin and William Morris.  They disliked the machine, and especially the mainstream commercial manufacturers.  They hoped that the public would accept their vision of society where only necessary and useful things would be made by skilled designer/craftsmen and -women.  They formed various guilds and societies, but the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was probably the most important.  This Society held its first show in London in 1888  and it continued to hold exhibitions until the 1920s.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

 

Design no. VI for St. Catherine’s Wheel tapestries, Tom Phillips

Design no. VI for St. Catherine’s Wheel tapestries, Tom Phillips, 1978. Museum no. E.144-1981, © Tom Phillips

Design no. VI for St. Catherine’s Wheel tapestries
Tom Phillips
England
1978
Pencil and watercolour
Width 18 cm x height 38 cm
Museum no. E.144-198
© Tom Phillips

Pattern

This design is in a pattern known as a ‘composite overlay’.  Such a composite overlay is created when one repeat system is overlaid by another. The pattern in the background is a block repeat of a pattern unit consisting of a wheel. The repeated pattern units (wheels) form horizontal rows in the background.  Pattern units (wheels) in paler colours are overlaid on this block repeat in a half drop repeat.  The pattern unit (wheel) is repeated by dropping each pattern unit (wheel) half-way down the pattern units in the background.

Processes and Techniques

The wheels have been drawn in pencil by using a compass.  The pinhole at the centre of each circle is evidence of the use of a compass.  The design was then painted in watercolour.  This design is one of a series of five for the three tapestries which St. Catherine’s College, Oxford commissioned Tom Phillips to design.  Edinburgh Tapestry Company, Edinburgh, Scotland wove the tapestries.  Although the Tapestry Studio carried a palette of 400 colours of woollen yarn, this did not provide enough rich colour. The richness of Phillips’ designs, as can be seen in the variety of colours in this design, demanded a different type of wool.  The weavers used a Norwegian wool, thicker and with more lustre, in addition to their palette of colours.  The tapestries were completed a year after Tom Phillips made this design. They are still hanging in the Hall at St. Catherine’s College.

The design is based on one of the versions of the legend of St. Catherine of Alexandra. St. Catherine was a young noblewoman who protested about the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperor Maxentius.  She was martyred early in the 4th Century when she was tied to a wheel, tortured and finally beheaded.  St. Catherine’s symbol is a spiked wheel.  She is patroness of scholars, hence the link with Oxford, and of wheelwrights, amongst others.

The Designer

Tom Phillips was born in London.  He studied English Literature at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, from 1957-1960; and Painting at Camberwell School of Art 1961-1963.  He taught Art History at Ipswich School of Art (1965-1966), Painting at the Bath Academy of Art (1966-1967), and then taught at Wolverhampton College of Art (1967-1970).  He also taught at the Royal College of Art and at the Slade School of Fine Art (1975). 

Howard Coutts, the curator, described Phillips’ working method for a painting entitled ‘Map Walks No. 1’  which can be compared to this design.  He stated ‘In this project ‘‘a street walk is aerially designed to be elegant in itself.  Sometimes sitting in an aeroplane one sees a street ‘picked-out’ because its lighting has (or has not) been modernized’’ (Tom Phillips, Works. Texts. To 1974., p.126).  In this image he has used the modern medium of acrylic paint on the actual pages of an A-Z of London to pick out those streets worthy of investigation.  The background has deliberately been darkened and blurred to suggest the darkness of night, and the route indicated with brilliant cream paint to suggest the fluorescence of the sodium lights on the street.’1  Phillips thus combined art in which recognizable figures or objects are portrayed, known as figurative art, and abstract art, that is art which does not show recognizable figures or objects.  In the case of ‘Map Walks No.1’ he used the actual pages of the A-Z of London (figurative art) and combined it with blurring which suggests darkness and brilliant cream paint which suggests the fluorescence of sodium lights.  Both suggestions of darkness and fluorescent lights are achieved by abstract art.  This type of art, which combines figurative and abstract art is reflected in this design for the St. Catherine’s Wheel tapestry. It depicts the wheels figuratively yet in an abstract design.  There is a sense of some wheels in the foreground showing clearly on top of others which form a darkened, blurred background.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

Squirrels and leaves wallpaper frieze, William Burges

Squirrels and leaves wallpaper frieze, William Burges, about 1872. Museum no. E.1862-1934

Squirrels and leaves wallpaper frieze
William Burges (1827-81)
Great Britain
about 1872
Machine print on paper
Width 14.5 cm x height 37 cm
Museum no. E.1862-1934
Given by Messrs. Jeffrey and Company

Pattern

The pattern, which consists of dark squirrels and leaves on a paler background is similar to designs on medieval tiles where a dark motif, or pattern element, is emphasised by contrast with a light background.  The pattern unit consists of a squirrel and leaves which has been turned through 180 degrees to give a horizontal mirror repeat.  The squirrel and leaves pattern unit is within a border of trefoils.  There are three repeats on the frieze.

Processes and Techniques

This is a wallpaper frieze which is the decorated band to be placed along the upper part of an internal wall.  The wallpaper is a colour machine print printed from a wooden cylinder.  The printing process is a relief printing one in which the printing surface is raised above the areas which are to remain blank.  The surface is inked with a sticky ink, stiff enough to stop it from flowing into the hollows.  Woodcutting is a relief printing process. In woodcutting the drawing is made on a smoothed block of wood.  The lines of the design are left untouched and the wood on either side of them is cleared away with a knife.  Large areas are removed with chisels and gouges.  A relief printing process which dates from the mid-nineteenth century used water-based colours which were printed from relief cylinders.  These relief cylinders, used as the printing surface, were made of wood which operated like the block in woodcutting. The colour is of a distemper-like nature and there is an appearance of thickly applied emulsion paint. The great pressure of the machine process resulted in a squashing of ink to the sides of the printed area which helps to identify the process today.

The Designer

William Burges was born in London. He decided to take up articles, that is become bound as an apprentice, in Edward Blore’s architectural practice in 1844.  Fifteen years later, he moved to the office of the architect Matthew Digby Wyatt.  He assisted on the publications Metal Work and its Artistic Design published in 1852 and The Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century published 1851-3 and in doing so acquired a detailed knowledge of design and techniques in the applied arts.  He first publication was an article on ‘Damascening’, or decoration etched on metalwork, in the Journal of Design published in 1850.  Burges became assistant and later partner in Henry Clutton’s architectural practice.  Burges helped him with the publication Domestic Architecture of France published in 1853.  The partners won the competition for Lille Cathedral in 1856 but they quarrelled and their architectural design was never built.  The Lille designs were in a French thirteenth-century style.  Two years later, Burges began to design furniture. His Yatman cabinet, named after H.G. Yatman who commissioned it) was in a new style influenced by the only two surviving pieces of elaborate French thirteenth-century furniture.  These pieces were cupboards at Noyon and Bayeux, France.  Both were illustrated by the French architect Viollet-le-Duc in 1858.  Burges also sketched the Noyon cupboard in 1853.  Burges’ furniture was first exhibited to the public at the London 1859 Architectural Exhibition.  It was later shown in the Medieval Court of the London 1862 International Exhibition. 

Burges was a knowledgeable antiquarian (someone who studies antiquities or works of art from ancient times) and collector.  He much admired Viollet-le-Duc’s archaeological knowledge.  Burges was an active member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, showing many objects from his own collections at meetings,  and he published on antiquarian subjects in the Gentleman’s Magazine and elsewhere.  He founded the Mediaeval Society in 1857.  Five years later, Burges gave the Royal Society of Arts’ Cantor Lectures on Art Applied to Industry, published as a book the following year in 1865.  He commemorated the publication by having his earlier design for a decanter executed.  The decanter was encased in metalwork which in turn incorporated an extraordinary variety of ancient, collected materials.  These included porphyry, lapis lazuli, Chinese jade, Persian seals and Greek coins.  The result was an object distinguished by its originality. This treatment was typical of Burges’ metalwork.  His designs were for a range of metalwork from chalices to ink-pots and jewellery.  Burges met the Marquis of Bute in 1865 for whom he restored Cardiff Castle from 1869 and Castle Coch in South Wales.  He designed a series of reformed Gothic interiors for these commissions.  Burges designed some wallpapers, of which this wallpaper frieze is one, for Jeffrey & Company in about 1871.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

 

Wallpaper flower pattern, Maria Brooks

Wallpaper flower pattern, Maria Brooks, 1868. Museum no. 1112B-1868

Wallpaper flower pattern
Maria Brooks
France
1868
Colour print from woodblocks
Width 57 cm x height 40.6 cm
Museum no. 1112B-1868

Pattern

The pattern is an open half drop repeat. The repeat is formed by placing each pattern unit half-way down the next pattern unit.  There is space around each pattern unit in this design hence it is known as an ‘open’ half drop repeat.

Processes and Techniques

This wallpaper is a colour print from a woodblock.  This technique of printing is known as a relief process.  In this particular process the printing surface is raised above the areas which are to remain blank.  The printing surface is a block of wood known as a ‘woodblock’.  The surface of the woodblock is inked with a sticky ink which is thick enough to stop it from flowing into the hollows.  The pattern is formed by cutting hollows into the woodblock with a sharp tool known as a burin.  The cut-away hollows are thus lower than the surface which carries the ink.  Most relief colour prints have been printed from several different woodblocks.  Each woodblock is cut with a different part of the pattern left on the surface.  This surface carries the ink.  The surface of each woodblock then prints a particular part of the pattern in its own unique colour.  The printer positions each woodblock in the correct place on the paper by using pins in the corner of the woodblock.   Then each separate colour is printed in the right place by each different woodblock.  The relief colour print is then said to be ‘in register.’

The Designer

This wallpaper was designed by Miss Maria Brooks when a student at the Royal College of Art about 1868.  The wallpaper was made at Corbière and Sons, France.  

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

 

Saxon wallpaper pattern of roses, Walter Crane

Saxon wallpaper pattern of roses, Walter Crane, 1909. Museum no. E.2324-1932

Wallpaper entitled 'Saxon'
Walter Crane
England
1909
Colour print from woodblocks
Width 20.5 cm x height 29 cm
Museum no. E.2324-1932

Pattern

The pattern has a horizontal emphasis and is a type known as a ‘brick repeat’.  It has a pattern unit of a rose organised in a horizontal mirror arrangement. The  roses have stems facing the same way on one row and then the other way on the row below. 

Processes and Techniques

This wallpaper is a colour print from a woodblock.  This technique of printing is known as a relief process.  In this particular process the printing surface is raised above the areas which are to remain blank.  The printing surface is a block of wood known as a ‘woodblock’.  The surface of the woodblock is inked with a sticky ink which is thick enough to stop it from flowing into the hollows.  The pattern is formed by cutting hollows into the woodblock with a sharp tool known as a burin.  The cut-away hollows are thus lower than the surface which carries the ink.  Most relief colour prints have been printed from several different woodblocks.  Each woodblock is cut with a different part of the pattern left on the surface.  This surface carries the ink.  The surface of each woodblock then prints a particular part of the pattern in its own unique colour.  The printer positions each woodblock in the correct place on the paper by using pins in the corner of the woodblock.   Then each separate colour is printed in the right place by each different woodblock.  The relief colour print is then said to be ‘in register.’ 

The Designer

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was born in Liverpool, England and was the son of an artist.  In 1859 he was apprenticed to a William Linton, a London wood engraver where he trained as a draughtsman on wood.  Crane was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement.  This movement was an informal combination of architects, designers and craftsmen who shared the ideals of the architect/ designer, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the artist/ art critic, John Ruskin and the artist/craftsman and businessman, William Morris. The members of the Arts and Crafts movement disliked the machine and especially the mainstream commercial manufacturers.  They hoped to influence people to share their vision of society where only necessary and useful things would be made by designer/craftsmen and -women.  They formed various guilds and societies but the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was probably the most important.  This Society held its first show in London in 1888 and it continued to hold exhibitions in the 1920s.  

Crane was celebrated for his subtle use of colour and stylised forms.  He is best known for his paintings and illustrations for children's books.  He was convinced that functional objects should be well designed and visually pleasing, and produced designs for wallpapers, textiles and ceramics.  Crane designed over fifty wallpapers for Jeffrey & Co., the wallpaper manufacturing firm, from 1874.  He also published important books on design.  In 1888 he helped to establish the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.  A dedicated teacher, Crane headed the Art Workers' Guild, the Manchester School of Art and the Royal College of Art.  He also lectured internationally.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

'Early Bird', colour screen print

'Early Bird', colour screen print, Sylvia Priestly, 1951. Museum no. E.887-1978

'Early Bird'
Colour screen print
Sylvia Priestly
Made by John Line & Sons Ltd.
England
1951
Width 54.6 cm x height 75 cm
Museum no. E.887-1978

Pattern

The pattern is a half drop pillar repeat. The repeat is made by placing each unit half-way down the next unit. The pattern units consist of a bird and also a stripe decorated with seven or eight circles. There are two pattern units each of which is a bird posed horizontally, facing right, or posed vertically, facing left. Each pattern unit or bird is placed half-way down the circles in the other’s stripe. The half drop repeat is perhaps the most usual of all the repeat systems. This type of repeat is used a lot in the wallpaper industry. This is because the arrangement of the repeats helps to make the pattern seem wider so that it appears to cover a surface easily. 

Processes and Techniques

This printed design is a colour screen print. This type of print is made by using a stencil. The principle of the stencil process is that the paper which is to receive the design has the areas which are to remain blank protected from the printing ink. The stencil protects areas to remain blank from the printing ink. In colour screen printing, the stencil is fixed to a fine mesh of silk, man-made fibre or steel, known as the screen. The screen is stretched over an open frame. The ink is pushed across its surface by a flexible blade called a ‘squeegee’ and forced through the holes where the printing surface is not protected on to the paper below. A separate screen is required for each colour of the finished print. 

The Designer

Sylvia Priestley was the daughter of J.B. Priestley, the author. She studied at the Slade School of Art and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, both of which are in London. She designed textiles and wallpapers and worked for the textile manufacturers Jacqmar Ltd, and Warner & Sons. She made ‘Early Bird’ for the wallpaper manufacturers, John Line & Sons Ltd for their series ‘Limited Editions 1951.’ This wallpaper was produced in various colour combinations which are known as ‘colourways’ in the wallpaper industry.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

Birds and plants design for a wallpaper and textile, C.F.A. Voysey

Birds and plants design for a wallpaper and textile, C.F.A. Voysey, 1891. Museum no. E.267-1913

Birds and plants design for a wallpaper and textile
C.F.A. Voysey (1857-1941)
England
1891
Pencil, black chalk and watercolour
Width 54 cm x height 59.9 cm
Museum no. E.267-1913

Pattern

The pattern is a half drop repeat with a horizontal mirror arrangement.  This is a design for a wallpaper and textile which shows how a design could be used in the same room so that the curtains matched the wall-covering.  Designers like William Morris, Walter Crane and the young Voysey were working at the forefront of design in the late 1880s and the 1890s.  They considered flat stylised pattern, of the kind demonstrated in this design, more suitable for decorating walls.  This was because they thought that figurative subjects, or those which imitated reality by using perspective and shading, were creating a false impression on a flat surface.  The majority of consumers, however, favoured existing styles which were also for sale at this period.  They were not enthusiastic about this new type of flat pattern.

Processes and Techniques

Only the central pattern unit is coloured in watercolour which is enough to indicate the colours in each repeat.  The rest of the pattern is in pencil or black chalk and in some areas the repeat is merely indicated by spaces.  The design does not need to be finished because the pattern repeats can be understood from the uncoloured drawing and even from the exact spaces. This is a working design for Essex & Co., the wallpaper manufacturers. Voysey includes the instruction to ‘underprint’ ‘green & yellow’.  This instruction is included amongst other colour notes in the border beneath the design.

The Designer

Voysey was born near Hull, England and later moved to London.  He was articled (bound as an apprentice) to J.P. Seddon, the architect, in 1874. Voysey set up as an independent architect in about 1882.  He became friends with the architect, designer and social reformer, A. H. Mackmurdo.  The wallpaper manufacturers, Jeffrey & Co., commissioned him to design wallpaper from 1883 onwards.  Voysey joined the newly established Art-Workers’ Guild in 1884.  Four years later he displayed wallpapers and printed textiles at the first exhibition of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society.  Voysey designed wallpapers under contract for Essex & Co from 1893.  They advertised ‘many papers by C.F.A. Voysey, the Genius of Pattern’ in the 1920s.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.

Hexagon pattern wallpaper, Humphrey Spender

Hexagon pattern wallpaper, Humphrey Spender, 1964. Museum no. E.956-1978, with kind permission of Arthur Andersen and Sons Ltd.

Hexagon pattern wallpaper
Humphrey Spender
Great Britain
1964
Screen print on paper
Width 55.7 cm x height 54 cm
Museum no. E.956-1978
With kind permission of Arthur Andersen and Sons Ltd.

Pattern

The pattern is a vertical stripe based on an expanded hexagon.

Processes and Techniques

This wallpaper is a colour screen print.  This type of print is made by using a stencil.  The principle of the stencil process is that the paper which is to receive the design has the areas which are to remain blank protected from the printing ink. The stencil thus protects areas to remain blank from the printing ink.  In colour screen printing, the stencil is fixed to a fine mesh of silk, man-made fibre or steel, known as the screen.  The screen is stretched over an open frame.  The ink is pushed across its surface by a flexible blade called a ‘squeegee’ and forced through the holes where the printing surface is not protected on to the paper below. A separate screen is required for each colour of the finished print. 

The Designer

Humphrey Spender was an English photographer, painter and textile designer.  He studied architecture at the Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg, in Germany (1927-8) and at the Architectural Association School in London (1929-34). Spender mainly taught himself photography but he learnt techniques from his brother Michael Spender, an employee of the Leitz camera factory.  He was the official photographer for the Mass Observation project in Britain from its foundation in 1937 until 1939.  The project brought together painters, poets, social scientists and film makers to record the details of everyday life.   Ten years later, Spender concentrated on painting and textile design.  From 1953 –1975 he was a tutor in textile design at the Royal College of Art, and for the last five years of this period he was a visiting lecturer at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, both in London.

This image can be found in Print Room Box 7.