Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In tracing the fascinating evolution of British textile design from 1940 to the present this book brings up to date the series of V&A monographs on the world’s greatest collection of British fabrics. The lucid text and revealing photographs show the outstanding talents and versatility of the nation’s fabric designers and craftspeople as well as the skill and acumen of its manufacturers and the vitality of its trade associations. This is set against the harsh economic reality of recent industrial decline and the struggle for survival in the face of global competition. The significance of the interplay between the fine and the applied arts is also highlighted. Only a collection as varied extensive and pristine as the V&A’s permits such an exciting visual promenade through fifty years of pattern colour and creativity. In the 1940s V&A curators with admirable tenacity maintained the Museum practice of collecting fabrics from current production that were considered to be in the stylistic vanguard. During and just after the war curators were undeterred by conscription austerity and cultural uncertainty and secured an excellent collection of Utility and other furnishing fabrics manufactured during a time of government restrictions and rationing. The relaxation and gradual revival that peace brought is reflected in a significant increase in the number of acquisitions. They show that it took some years for the dyestuffs’ industry to regenerate itself and for designers to cast off the drab browns beiges and muddy oranges that prevailed during the mid-1940s. The V&A joined the forefront of recovery by turning its entire ground floor over to the 1946 Britain Can Make It exhibition which marked a stylistic turning point in the applied arts. By the early 1950s the UK was an international force producing award-winning textiles with the so-called Contemporary designs. Lucienne Day’s Calyx of 1951 made a huge impact and subsequently became a leitmotif for the 1950s. Samples in the collection capture the popular taste of the decade and feature designs with a plethora of spindly lines punctuated by nodules in the favourite colours of acid yellow greeny-grey and orange with the curious Festival of Britain experiment (SP)