Post-war Britain

The last lecture we had explored the links between art, science, natural and machine. It focused on Designers who's aim was to make art and design accessible to the people. Christopher Dresser, William Morris, Bauhaus, Joseph Paxton (Crystal Palace) and Le Courbusier all featured.

We were asked to research the Festival of Britain to further our learning, which reminded me of a   channel 4 programme The House the 50s Built , that I watched while back. Unfortunately the programme is no longer available to watch on 4OD, so I can't watch it again, but luckily there is an outline of each episode on the website to remind me. The series celebrated the science behind the inventions and innovations that transformed the way we lived and catapulted an exhausted post-war country into the modernity of 1950s Britain.

During the WWII, design and technology stood still in Britain's homes, because all the countries efforts were focused on winning the war. It was only after the war ended that we could begin to apply new scientific and technologic advances (some of which were developed for the war effort) to make the lives of the people of 1950s Britain easier, brighter and more fun.

The new developments of the science world had a direct effect on design in everyday peoples homes. Sciencists invented many different forms of plastics from the polymers found in oil including:

Formica 

image from here

Created by impregnating paper with phenolic resin and building up lots of layers and heat pressing together until set into a laminate. Formica was a colourful and hygienic worksurface for the new fitted kitchens of the '50s

Polyurethene Foam 

 image from here

The unhygienic horsehair and straw used in pre-war sofas was replaced by this clean and cheap synthetic foam. This made the stuffing for upholstery lighter, less bulky and designers could mould it into any number of shapes.

PVA  

 image from here

Pre-war furniture was carved from separate pieces of carved solid wood and joined together by experts furniture makers. But with the invention of PVA glue and a WWII technique used to develop the Mosquito fighter bomber, it was possible to glue thin sheets of wood together and mould them with press into different shapes to create iconic furniture that is still considered fashionable today.

Vinyl Paint

 image from here

PVA glue was also used to make vinyl paint, replacing the dangerously combustable linseed oil paint and toxic lead paint, that had to be mixed by hand by a professional. The new vinyl paints adhered well to walls and created a smooth wipe clean surface. Home decorating became popular as paint companies marketed this new ready mixed paint at the DIY market.

Wallpaper Paste

 image from here

Pre-war, wallpaper paste was made from flour and water, making wallpapering messy and unpredictable. But in 1953 a new synthetic wallpaper paste, marketed under the name of Polycell, was launched. Its mass production lead the rise of the 'feature wall' as people bought the new abstract wallpaper designs first showcased at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

Nylon and Polyester

image from here

Nylon was developed as a replacement for silk used in parachutes in during WWII. But come 1950, it first hit the UK shelves in the form of nylon stockings. Nylon was cheaper than the pricey and hard to come by silk, and had elastic properties that made underwear and stockings supportive yet comfortable.

In 1952 Polyester was made into a thread and used as a replacement for wool. Suit salesmen would jump into swimming pools, fully clothed, to demonstrate the amazing drip dry properties of this new wonder fibre.

Not only did the science provide materials for designers to use in their work, but they also provide new inspiration for abstract print designers such as Lucienne Day. This iconic woven jacquard from the Warner Textile Archive in Braintree is called Hemsley and was designed by Marianne Straub for the Festival of Britain (1951). The design was inspired from the atomic structure of nylon. The Warner Textile Archive have used this design as part of their new wallpaper range, which was actually used the  channel 4 programme 'The House the 1950s Built'.

image from here

Finally, with these new scientific and technological innovations, William Morris' dream of "art for the people" was now achievable. Many of Lucienne Day's fabric designs were made in long production runs, which kept the price affordable. It pleased her to think that people who could not afford to buy a painting for their living room could at least own a pair of abtract patterned curtains. She, along with many more designers of the 1950s, had made the link between mass production and fine art. 

First Lecture

My wednesdays will now consist of a series of lectures that will eventually lead to presentations and a 2000 word essay. We will also be completing a personal planning module which aims to help us to organise our study time effectively, encourage reflective learning and to aid us in planning for our future.

Personally,  I struggle with auditory learning. So although I find lectures interesting, I find it difficult to take in and remember everything being said. But after each lecture I understand that we will be able to discuss what was said, as a group, which will hopefully help things sink in and clarify anything I am unsure of.

Our first lecture focused on how we can use a critical approach to interpreting visual images. I think the main gist of it is that an image and its meaning can be affected by three main points:

• The method/material used to produce the image 
• The composition of the image itself
• The intended audience of the image

This blog will make up 60% of my mark for our personal planning module. It should document my personal response to all aspects of my learning throughout this year, be it lectures, studio practise, workshops, presentations or independent learning.

One of the first projects we have been asked to complete is a group report/presentation on one of the four main Fashion Weeks. My group have been allocated London Fashion Week. I think it will be good to start a group project at the beginning of the course, as it will encourage us all (there is 34 in our class) to integrate with each other more than we might if we were left to our own devices.

dyeing with nature

I stumbled across this beautiful and inspiring blog, via Pinterest, called Tinctory .

Eva uses silk and smocking to create beautiful pleated jewellery, but what has inspired me the most is her experiments with natural dying. Once I come back of holiday I will definitely be ordering myself some Japanese indigo plants from here and trying out some of her techniques especially the steam printing and ice flowers.

More Knit Inspiration

Some more great knit inspiration from Irenebrination

1940s print inspiration

I have been looking at some original floral printed fabrics from the 1940s which are sold by Donna Flower to help me design my screen print using my great grandmothers embroidery transfers.

I think that this type of layout would work well for my design as the flowers look like they are growing in one direction, rather than just scattered about.

I like the use of wildflowers and wheat in this design.

Although in this design the flowers look quite stylised which is not what I am trying to achieve, I like the use of the grid as a background, as grids and nets were something that featured heavily on my allotments.

I like the use of outline in this print.

Sampling

I began sampling with fabric today. I started by experimenting with how I could use the embroidery transfers in way that would be different from their original intended use.

First I ironed on a transfer, and then painted the image with procion dyes.

Then I did the same, but machine embroidered the outline of the image in dark brown before painting with the dyes.

I also experimented with how it would look like if the dyes bled through the outline. I achieved this by dampening the areas to be painted first with water.

I like how both effects have turned out. They reminded me of a vintage souvenir scarf that I have. My mum told me that both my samples and the scarf look like a technique used to decorate ceramics called 'clobbering'. This is when a transfer is fired on to ceramics and then children hand painted the design, which is why the colours go outside the line.

The sample below was inspired by a variety of visual inspiration that I had collected for my Pinterest board.

The collage below was taken from a similar picture of seedlings in pots from my visual research and I decided to use the seedling motif in a similar way to the textile artist Viv of Hens Teeth who I have mentioned in a previous post.

The above print and ariel shot of allotments below immediately suggested a patchwork design to me. I want to evoke the mismatch rows of plots whilst still keeping a certain colour harmony with the varying shades of green. Unlike a traditional patchwork the plots are a bit higgledy piggly and rough around the edges, so to suggest this I will try to create a patchwork effect by using a appliqué technique.

Tea to dye for

Just before starting this project I was reading a book about gardening called the Morville Year by katherine Swift. (Which I would highly recommend if you are interested in gardening, nature and the history of both. Her first book is the Morville Hours, but personally I found that a little too heavy on history and religion.)

In the book one interesting fact she highlighted was that during WWII damsons were harvested and used to dye the soldiers uniforms khaki colour. So of course I thought it would be a really good to have a go at this, only at the time of doing this project, it is spring, and damson season isn't till late summer.

So I had to think of another way that I could achieve a similar khaki colour with a natural dye that would have been available to households in WWII. Although tea was rationed like many foods, it is well known that 1940s women used cold tea to dye their legs and kohl to draw fake seams to look like silk stockings, of which there was a shortage of.

I decided to try out tea dyeing some calico and cotton voile to see whether it might be a process I could use in my final outcome.

I boiled two teabags in a medium saucepan of water and then simmered two samples for 10 mins and another two for 20 mins.

As you can see from the picture above, the two on the right that were in for the longest are slightly darker in colour. My plan is to either keep the base of the apron dress undyed or to dye the whole thing in tea to give it a khaki colour.

More Sketch-booking

As I have mentioned before, I have been really inspired to use my great grandmother's embroidery transfers in some way. I think it makes sense, as she would have been using these transfers herself during World War II, so they are of the same period of the Land Girls. The girls would have been spending some of their free time in the evenings to make these pretty embroideries, in a bid to brighten up their rooms in this time of austerity.

Traditionally, the lines of the transfers would have been hidden by the finished embroidery, but I think that they are rather lovely in their own right and have been visualising them as a screen print in a dark brown outline. You can see a dark outline being used in these original 1940s printed fabrics from Donna Flower below.

1930s-40s fabric from Rabbit fabrics

Embroidery inspiration

I have really been inspired by the textile art of Viv of Hens Teeth. I love her modern approach of combining free machine embroidery, hand embroidery and appliqué with found objects. I think it

The simplicity of these french knots on stalks is so effective

and I love the rough sketchy quality of the hand embroidery on this postcard

this is such a lovely combination of appliqué, machine embroidery and hand embroidery.

Research map

Cinderellas of the Soil Pinterest Board

I have been collating a Pinterest board for my new project which can be viewed here.