Modern Print Monday: Madeleine Vionnet

Dress by  Madeleine Vionnet,

silk appliqued to a tulle

Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975), about 1930

Madeleine Vionnet's French fashion house begun before World War I thrived in the years between the wars and closed in 1939.

Her signature look was the bias-cut.

She did not use prints so much as patchwork.

Thayaht fashion plate, early 1920s

Her collaborator was futurist artist Thayaht (Ernesto Michahelles) who illustrated her ideas as she draped fabric on the model.

Last year an exhibit of Thayaht's paintings was up for Milan's fashion week.

Read more about Vionnet here:
http://pinsndls.com/2012/11/30/fashionista-friday-madeleine-vionnets-roses/

And see her revived fashion house here:
http://www.vionnet.com/madeleine-vionnet

Celebrating Popular Culture: Entertainment

The Ballet Russe (Russian Ballet) in Paris exile

inspired fanciful Orientalism,

 a case of pop culture affecting design

in interiors, clothing and textile prints.

Leon Bakst did the costumes for Scheherazade and other ballets.

Hermes Scarf Ballet Russe

The Tale of Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights

was especially romantic.

Egyptian dress in fashion plate by 

Barbier for Paul Poiret

Print from a mid-century blouse

inspiring an Arabian nights theme that lasted for years.

Magic carpets and Minarets

Popular culture continued to influence print design.

TV and cowboy shows in a tea towel

Davy Crockett--

These prints can be

classified as conversation prints or novelty prints

Little Abner licensed comics print---

Daisy Mae

The dachshund fad of the fifties and sixties

Beatles from the 1960s

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

Celebrating Popular Culture: International Travel

Anyone who looks closely at quilts of the 1945-1970 period

finds glimpses of Paris, Mexico, Hawaii and Holland in the prints

on the theme of international travel.

Fifties Feedsack celebrating transportation.

Architecture around the world

Novelty print for a skirt

France was a favorite theme

As were tropical islands

and "primitive cultures..." 

Many attribute the craze for foreign cliches in prints

to the returning WWII vets who brought Hawaiian shirts

with them...

Which trickled down to feedsack prints

and rayon dress prints.

Venice in border prints for skirts

Parisian train stations

Feedsack with European houses

It's one thing to celebrate the architecture and landscape but

designers of the times seem compelled to include cliched

representations of the population.

Monterey Mexican prints were extremely popular for kitchen textiles.

Asian people

And the Dutch children were everywhere.

Better to stick with dogs than human stereotypes.

Modern Print Monday: Walter Crane

Artichoke wallpaper by Walter Crane

printed by Jeffrey & Co., 1895

Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Walter Crane (1845-1915 ) in 1886

Walter Crane was a prolific artist and designer in late-19th-century England, best known as a book illustrator in arts & craft style.  He also designed tiles and wallpaper.

Two of Crane's wallpaper designs appear in this 1902 German article.

To the left of CFA Voysey's Bird & Tulip, above,

 Cockatoo & Pomegranate in the center.

In the center: Crane's The Hunt

next to a William Morris & Company design.

The Morris influence is obvious.

Crane's pomegranates, 1899

William Morris's pomegranates, 1866

Mary Frances Andrews Crane, 1886

In this photo from the Victoria & Albert collection

Crane's`wife's "rational dress" is printed with pairs of birds, 

a variation of Morris's "Strawberry Thief" pattern.

Strawberry Thief

Like his fellow aesthetic designers, Crane's repeat pattern work was for wall paper

rather than textiles, although easily adaptable.

His collectible books featured repeat pattern

endpapers.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is the source for Crane's wallpaper designs.

Here's a search:

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?listing_type=&offset=0&limit=15&narrow=&extrasearch=&q=walter+crane&commit=Search&quality=1&objectnamesearch=&placesearch=&after=&after-adbc=AD&before=&before-adbc=AD&namesearch=&materialsearch=&mnsearch=&locationsearch=