‘It takes a woman to think up a design idea that other women have been wanting for years.’

LUCIENNE DAY. TEXTILE DESIGNER

FOLLOWING the bleak austerity of World War Ⅱ, engineering brilliance and creative energy once deployed for wartime necessities became focused on domestic design. Colour and pattern were introduced to household goods as innovations in interior product design flourished. Consigned once more to the domestic sphere after the relative freedom enjoyed during the exigencies of war work, women elevated the kitchen beyond a place of simple utility, for some previously the domain of servants, to become the heart of the home. Here, the housewife directed her energies to incorporating style and novelty into the epicentre of her domestic empire. The evolving domestic aesthetic incorporated a feminine version of Modernism, and expendable ephemera such as small kitchen accessories in the form of tableware and tea towels allowed her a freedom of expression that was otherwise lacking in the narrowly prescribed life of the 1950s housewife. Under her dominion, the kitchen became a social space and an arena for display, with the division of labour sharply defined between the sexes.

New scientific materials usurped the role of traditional surface finishes. Seats were glossily vinyl covered, while tables and cupboard fronts were transformed with plastic laminates, such as Con-Tact, a sticky-backed vinyl film developed in 1954, or the more durable Formica- each flaunting brighter colours and washable, stain-resistant surfaces. These allowed an overall scheme of colour and pattern in which the tea towel played an integral part. Stylization and abstraction infused the prevailing aesthetic. The result was an inflection of both scientific modernity and the high culture of international modern art, with forms vaunted by sculptors like Gabo, Hepworth, Arp and Picasso subliminally influencing the domestic landscape. Pattern took on dynamic asymmetrical forms, such as the pointed boomerang, a symbol of movement and flight, or the artist’s palette with its blobs of vibrant colour. Scientific advances provided the molecule as inspiration, as did skeletal plant forms and the work of artists that included Alexander Calder and Joan MirÓ.

These influences came to fruition in both textiles and ceramics, such as Terence Conran’s Cbequers. This was developed in 1957, based on a design Conran originally created in 1951 for the textile manufacturer David Whitehead. Enid Seeney’s Homemaker tableware for Ridgway Potteries, designed in 1955, was decorated with everyday contemporary items. Seeney incorporated a representation of a chair designed by Robin Day, exemplifying the cross-fertilization and integration of design ideas across a broad spectrum of products. When the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) was founded in 1947 it emblemized the new panorama of post-war optimism and creativity in the single word ‘contemporary’, bridging all sectors – including art, architecture, product, graphic design and textiles. In this period textile design pioneers were legion, including Marian Mahler, Tom Mellor, Jacqueline Groag and Lucienne Day, who produced several designs for the influential Festival of Britain in 1951. This exhibition was staged to promote the most exciting and progressive in new British design. Day’s influential Calyx design retailed through Heal’s Fabrics and resulted in a plethora of copies. Technical developments, for example the use of of automatic screen printing, reduced the cost and fuelled the introduction of new patterns to the marketplace, enabling these designs to be accessible to a wider audience.

Although wartime food rationing continued until 1954, representations of utopian domesticity and fanciful consumption -from flowering geraniums in terracotta plant pots or trailing ivy over a trellis, to fruit in bowls, wine glasses, jugs, vases and kitchen utensils-all featured on the contemporary tea towel. In this way daily minutiae were to be seen as a celebration and resurrection of the importance of the home and the stability of family households.

《the art of the tea towel》

Marnie Fogg