Modern Print Monday: Loïs Mailou Jones

Designs for cretonne by

Loïs Mailou Jones

in the 1920s and '30s

Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) 

Jones brought Harlem Renaissance ideas to fabric design.

Born in Boston, she graduated from  Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts. As a free-lance designer, Jones designed cretonnes (furnishing fabric) in the 1920s and '30s, selling designs to Schumacher and F.A. Foster.

These images are all croqui (tempera paintings for fabric). It would be great to find some vintage fabric made in her designs.

Woman by Loïs Mailou Jones

Collection of Howard University

She taught painting and design at Howard University from 1930 to 1977.

Read more about her:
http://womeninthearts.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/lois-mailou-jones-the-designer/

Here's an essay by Tritobia Benjamin at Howard University:
http://library.howard.edu/content.php?pid=558535