https://carocommunications.com/lucienne-day-living-design/
As part of a project I am undertaking this semester, I'm required to create a pop-up display showcasing specific designers work. I was given the influential textiles designer Lucienne Day. Since I need to do research on Day's career, I thought why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone and create a blog out of it too.
Lucienne was born on January 5th 1917 she later graduated from the printed textiles department of the Royal College of Arts in 1940, unfortunately, the war stinted Days career and she took up teaching to keep her busy. Once the restrictions from the war were lifted, she promptly got in contact with her manufacturing clients to make modern furnishing textiles. Furthermore, a major governmental initiate was taking place which promoted the nations industrial production. This was done by raising the status, training and ultimately the output of British designers. Approaching the end of the 1940's Lucienne had secured work with Edinburgh Weavers, Cavendish Textiles and Heals. Despite Day producing designs for the dress industry her initial commercial work producing furnishing textiles was not overly advanced for the time. She believed that a designer must be practical and meet the market's needs. I completely agree with this statement as I think good design should fulfil the consumer's needs and nothing more, otherwise, it becomes overly complicated and makes it harder to understand.
Left to right: Dress fabric designed for Festival of Britain. Provence wallpaper https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/lucienne-day-an-introduction
In 1951, Robin Day (Lucienne' husband) secured a commission to design the seating for the new Royal Festival Hall. He also was asked to design room settings for the Gardens Pavilion and Festival's Homes. To complement his modern furniture Robin needed a wallpaper and furnishing fabric. Lucienne's Provence was selected for one room to represent an affordable interior. For the other room, Lucienne created a new design called Calyx, intended to match the more costly room. Initially, Heals were sceptical of the design as it was completely different from anything they'd seen before but eventually agreed to it. Despite their fears, Day's new design had great market appeal and it was one of the many commercial successes the pair had. The design is now recognised as a groundbreaking piece of British post-war design.
Calyx, furnishing fabric shown in two different colours: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/lucienne-day-an-introduction
During Lucienne's time at college she spent numerous hours in the galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum, this is where she drew a lot of her inspiration from. Botanicals were an important aspect of her designs, the application of this theme provides some of the most visually appealing work. Despite their increasing celebrity status both Lucienne and Robin stayed committed to answering the material needs and demands of the consumer market. Calyx was intensely popular, however, it came with a steep price tag, this then leads to Heals requesting a smaller design with a more modest price tag. Motivated to produce more affordable work, Lucienne looked into new man-made fibres such a rayon, Flotilla made use of these fibres. Palisade was designed for a company called British Celanese who exclusively produce man-made fabrics from cellulose fibres. This made Days designs much more affordable as well as soft and durable.
Left to right: Flotilla furnishing fabric. Palisade furnishing fabric. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/lucienne-day-an-introduction
Furnishing fabrics were Lucienne's speciality, however, this did not mean she didn't produce designs for other applications. Dress fabrics are what started off her career in the early post-war days. Numerous wallpapers in collaboration with companies such as Cole & Son, Crown and Rasch were highly successful. Carpet designs were another staple of her career, Tesserae, in particular, was an important one as it won a Design Centre Award in 1957. Another medium of design that was noticed by the Design Centre Awards was Lucienne's tea towels which won in 1960. Throughout this productive period Day also collaborated with prestigious German manufacturer Rosenthal to produce elegant china tableware. In the later stages of Day's career, she turned to creating silk mosaics which comprised of 1cm squares and strips of colour silk. Lucienne was fantastic at adapting her skillset to various requirements of the brief and continually progressing her designs. I believe this is an important aspect of a good designer, having the ability to continually develop even after a huge success and not to stick with what is popular at the time. This also applied to design, continually adapting and evolving products to make them more eco-friendly, practical and user-friendly is key to creating good design.
Flying in Blue silk mosaic. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/lucienne-day-an-introduction
