On the 12th January 2023 my book for Bloomsbury on the subject of repeat printed pattern for interiors will be published, … finally there’s not long to wait having worked on it for years!
If you want to order a copy at a pre-publication discount you can do that here.
The process of writing a book has been a long one for me, but we are a step closer to publication … January 2023. I can’t quite believe I am an author of a book!
I’ve recently received the pre-publication inspection copies and I’m so excited to be able to share the first glimpse. I’ve been really touched by the initial responses from the contributors who have been receiving their copies, who without them, this project wouldn’t have got off the ground.
I’m waiting patiently till the new year, but here it is, the beautiful cover, featuring the pattern Bloomsbury Garden by Timorous Beasties. The book is designed to inspire and inform people about the complexities of designing pattern for interiors, and is an ideal core text for undergraduate studies. I’m delighted to be featuring the work of students I had the pleasure to teach, as well as more well known names including Angie Lewin, Sarah Campbell, Timorous Beasties, Oral Kiely and Neisha Crosland.
You can pre-order your copy here
A while ago I received a message from a friend over in America, and knowing of my career and personal interest in textiles, she was writing to see if I’d like to receive some old but special textiles she had spare that made her think of me… I was intrigued what might arrive in the post… How could I refuse!? A few days later two beautiful squares of cloth arrived, one with a woman and the other a man stitched in to the cloth across one corner, with gently ornate decorative edges and corner details.
She thinks they are napkins, they are very light weight cloth. Accompanying the two pieces was a note sharing what she knew of the provenance, and how she had acquired them to share with me. Emily remembers them in her mother’s ‘stash’ of things in the 1970s, when she must have been only about 4 years old, so they made an impression on her.
They were possibly bought by her Grandma Daisy (an accomplished and frankly, rather compulsive ‘antiquer’), at an estate sale, maybe a farmhouse estate sale. She had a good eye and built an impressive hoard! Emily told me there is a sizeable German-American population in Wisconsin, so this might be part of the story too.
I’ve consulted my panel of experts as I’m no embroidery expert myself, and they’ve been a great help (thanks particularly to Grainne & Liss) … I think it’s safe to say it’s a combination of techniques, including cut work and stump work. One of my experts suggests stump work is the overarching technique, particularly to create the woven style stitches of the figures. Often more three-dimensional than these examples, stump work can be highly ornate with raised areas, but these squares appear rather low in relief.
We can also see whitework embroidery, a broad term including a number of different techniques, working with white thread, often linen, pulling the warp and weft threads to form motifs. Pulled or drawn thread work are examples of whitework where no cuts are made. Cutwork is a form of whitework where areas of woven cloth are cut away and stitched in new configurations. These samples include cutwork featuring buttonhole stitch & buttonhole bars with detached needlelace. I hope I’ve got all this down correctly!
There is an amazing online Royal School of Needlework resource here for more stitch information – you might be lost for hours!
A detail to note is that the figures have been created on the bias of the cloth, set diagonally on the weave near the corners, rather than the straight line of the weave. This may be a specific approach preferred by a particular maker, region or process, so might help identify the provenance.
The figures are wonderfully stylised as a result of the stitching process, naive and full of character. They remind me of folk art examples I’ve seen before and historic world textile samples at the Pitt Rivers collection in Oxford only a week or so ago. Also the characters are not dissimilar to the figures on the Asafo flags of the Asante in Ghana I’ve written about before. Once again, the process of stylising and representing imagery as motifs is shown to be one of my favourite subjects!
Textiles, although fragile, can survive in the right conditions for centuries, and can hint at stories of society, status, lifestyle and identity. The textile skills required to make these pieces are likely to be far more commonplace at the time these pieces were made too. Lightweight, portable and often with specific uses, textiles have been transported all over the world with people travelling for all manner of reasons. These two pieces have their own history I’d love to know more about, not only to understand where they were made and by whom, but also to understand the journey they have been on since their creation.
Despite not knowing more I shall continue to enjoy them, and in the process of writing this post I’ve learned a bit more about embroidery too… I am grateful to have been sent them to care for. Thanks Emily!
My ongoing research practice of drawing and design regularly explores pattern structures within the family of geometrics. I enjoy testing motifs and rhythms that belong to traditional compositions, and deconstruct the scaffolding to look for new iterations.
In this recent work I am looking to the concept of themes and variations in music to drive the visual investigation. Repeat doesn’t feature, but it’s certainly a consideration for the future.
With a short break between academic years, and the book in production I hope to find some time to take this project forward over the coming few weeks.
I’m delighted to share the news that after nearly five years in development, we are at the stage of announcing the book I’ve been writing on repeat printed pattern for interiors, with Bloomsbury Publishing is now available for pre-publication order.
The book is a culmination of my design and teaching practice experience over the last two decades and features some historic and contemporary designs and interviews with some leaders in the field including Sarah Campbell, Neisha Crosland, Deborah Bowness and Orla Kiely. It is for anyone who is interested in printed pattern design, including design students. You can read more here.
I’m delighted to be able to feature this beautiful pattern by Timorous Beasties on the cover too.
Thirty years ago I began my art school experience studying a diploma in Surface Pattern, a little unsure of what was meant by the course title, but keen to find out more as it involved drawing, printmaking, pattern and textiles. I thrived at art school, building practical skills and theoretical knowledge, growing in confidence in my ability, encouraged to experiment and play with ideas and processes. When I think back to what I understood of careers in textile design at this time, I have little memory of career planning, or job role research. This was the era of the Yellow Pages; I couldn’t Google it! I made decisions about my degree course based on the fact my tutors suggested I was more of a printer than a knitter or weaver.
During my degree I undertook a floral print project in the first year and hated it so much I nearly threw it in for fine art printmaking, but then I gave myself a talking to, and realised I wanted to frame my practice in design, to apply my thinking to scenarios, and to problem solve. This has stood me in good stead, both as a designer and academic. I believe the context in which we work is as important as the role we undertake.
I think back to those days and see a very different textile industry to the one we are experiencing now. I graduated at the dawn of digital design, without the range of composite surface materials for interior applications, or bespoke digital production that enabled me to collaborate with Formica when launching my collections in the mid 20-teens. As a freelance designer in the late 1990s I was posting hand painted textile designs in large cardboard tubes across the country to my agent and sending my portfolio out as slides (transparencies) for exhibition applications, hoping they would be returned to save me money and hassle – they rarely were! Thank goodness for the digital cloud of today, allowing files to be accessed around the globe in an instant. Laser cutting and 3D printing have become the norm (even in schools) since then, and expertise in digital software is a basic requirement in graduate jobs. It is easy to take these developments for granted – but our line of work is transformed.
Over the years since that time, I’ve built a career embracing many different opportunities as a designer, artist and designer maker: launching my own brand collections, undertaking illustration or pattern commissions, exhibiting, designing public art (including three large gravel roofscapes and three public toilets!) as well as leading residencies in healthcare settings. I have enjoyed the variety of projects I have completed, building my understanding of several sectors of the industry. Ensuring I remain up to date with industry developments has been key to the relevance I maintain in my academic position.
In the last twenty years we have seen the development of ‘smart’ textiles for medical applications, interactive electronic textiles for military and domestic use, bio-materials and colour developed from bacteria and new design opportunities in the digital realm within the simulated environment – the metaverse, an emerging international arena. At the same time, during a global pandemic we see a resurgence in low-tech craft with textile processes such as crochet and knit identified as beneficial activities for our wellbeing, and a fightback against the consumer culture.
The breadth of opportunity available across the discipline of textile design today is exciting, and fast evolving. Revisiting craft practices for contemporary markets is not new. The Arts and Crafts movement spearheaded by William Morris, advocating for handicrafts and naturally dyed yarn and cloth, was an attempt to battle against technological innovation and the resulting cheap and poor-quality products flooding the market. The current growth of interest in craft practices again connects us to the heritage of making and the close relationship with material and process that nurtures us. Sustainable solutions compete with mass produced problems. Customers are easily overwhelmed by choice and price-points, single use versus something for life – future heirlooms, or landfill. Digital design provides solutions by reducing fabric waste in the fashion industry using 3D digital rendering to identify and fix issues, where previously each garment in each size or colourway would be produced and discarded as products were developed. Craft and technology are not mutually exclusive.
The creative industries we have today were unimaginable to me as a student, and now, I think about the relationship today’s students have with the industry and how far into the future they can imagine. As head of the discipline at my institution I am required to consider the future of textile design, to design an educational experience to not only equip the students and graduates for roles that we know about, but also provide them with the curiosity and creativity to shape the roles we can’t quite define. Ambitious ideas need to be partnered with strong realisation skills, traditional craft and making skills paired with digital competence. Let’s see where the next thirty years takes us!
I’m sure I’ve written about it before, but I’m often intrigued how an idea can rattle about in my head for years, exist as drawings or collages, but not quite feel right… then manifest in a way that makes those years of waiting make sense. I’ve recently created a sequence of three drawings that appear to have done just that.
Drawing is a key creative process for me. I don’t always find as much time as I’d like but I draw to capture the beauty of a flower, or the shape of a field, and often have no planned use for the image; the drawing exists for itself. Over the years I can see drawings are linked by a longer-term inquiry, and these single elements collectively define the aesthetic of my practice.
I’ve been working on some new landscape-inspired drawings, bringing together some colour mixing and the monochrome marks, rhythms and textures relating to the Norfolk landscape. I began with a journey through the drawers of my plan chest to pull together a dictionary of visual language to guide me, and following a cycle ride in the landscape I took pencil in hand, and began to draw. Painting features very little in my practice, really only for colour-mixing but this time it felt right to capture the colour in gouache and apply directly with brushes on to the paper, layered up with the graphite of the drawing.
These drawings are part of the ongoing journey, but I do think it’s important to stop and notice when something feels right, like a good fitting piece of jigsaw in the puzzle.
One of the aspects of drawing for pattern design that fascinates me is the stylising process; how we see something and process it as an interpretation of the thing we initially saw. I’ve written about this several times on this blog over the last few years. When I start to draw something new I make quick studies to get to know the subject matter, and work out what the key information might be, and how I retain the qualities that make the subject remain visible in some small way – depending on how much I want to hold on to the recognisable elements.
While washing up the other day I saw two of our plates side by side in a way that got me thinking: I saw connections I’d not spotted before despite the visual languages of the plates appearing to be very different.
Both plates are decades old, both have seen better days. One is a simple graphic motif, one is a rather nostalgic painted flower posy.
Both plates appear to have floral-inspired printed surface designs. Both designs could be described as featuring yellow flower heads (although one includes other flowers too while the other contains multiple prints of the same motif elements).
One design is pared right back to stylise the flower by only recording a stem and flower head. The style is almost diagrammatic in the simplicity of the motif consisting of black stem and V-shaped lines crossing the stem to suggest leaves. The flower head is a straightforward circle with a dotted outline. Not all stem motifs have heads, there is a randomness in the composition across the plate.
The other plate design features painterly and drawn details, a generous sprig of flowers utilising more colours to express the tones and textures of the flower and leaf details and certainly more expressive in its rendering. The flowers are placed on one side of the plate, as if allowing space for the cake to be placed alongside. The yellow flower head is certainly the attention grabber.
Now I’ve spent a bit more time thinking about these designs I actually believe they make a great pairing, two designs that complement each other in what they offer. I’m not so keen on matching crockery and enjoy using our mix and match plates collected over the years from car boot sales, charity shops, family hand-me-downs and gifts – they all offer reference points and bring something to the collection, and this week I’ve been grateful to appreciate this duo in a new light.
As a keen lover of patterns I’m always on the look out for interesting examples to add to my consciousness. I do like a good geometric as well as micro (small scale) repeating patterns so despite being immensely annoyed to find myself back in hospital on a ward for a week I did spot the odd pattern of interest…
I’m interested in small details that make patterns work, and I spend time in my teaching analysing successes and failures of patterns in relation to motifs, pattern structures and repeats to teach the students how to improve their own designs. These NHS designs, printed on fabric for hospital nighties (left), pyjamas (middle) and the surgical gown (right) do demonstrate merit.
Small details on the pyjamas / nighties, such as the spot actually being a hexagon, the less obvious choice, and the squares making up the bigger square block including smaller squares in the darker colour, means they contrast with the larger mid green colour bring visual interest. If the darker squares were the same size they may well appear too dominant. Interestingly, the pyjamas had the green colourway as vertical stripes, and yet the same design in red was placed as horizonal stripes on the nightie. I wonder why this was. Let’s not talk of the fit of these garments! The surgical gown is more simple, but I appreciate the fact that the cross is made up of broken lines, with a small dot in the middle – so much more interesting that if it had been two lines crossing.
These are tiny details that most people will overlook, I know I was probably not the most typical of inpatients, but if you spend any length of time on a ward, nil by mouth for several days your mind wonders. I found there to be a significant challenge in retaining something of myself as a person beyond the sick patient, with all the focus and attention on your health, or lack of. The pattern spotting was a way of still being me.
As I said at the top, I like micro patterns and have shared my collection of envelope insides on the blog before. I like the smaller scale patterns that provide visual rhythms and noise, that get on with doing their job, in a simple utilitarian manner. These patterns on hospital garments also got me thinking about moquette, the hard-wearing fabrics on transport upholstery, and how those patterns signs are there to conceal dirt and wear, whereas these hospital ones with the white background were doing the opposite.
I hope you don’t find yourselves in hospital to have the chance to analyse patterns on your gown, but if you do, I hope you like the ones you’ve got!
Kate Farley - drawn to design 