Wallpaper designers, like the coverings they produce, are dazzlingly varied. In this arena, however, can it be a coincidence that some of the most striking and innovative designs of the 20th century were produced by women? From Jacqueline Groag, whose bright British prints cut a swathe through the couture houses of Paris, to Colleen Farr, who jazzed up the high street with some of Liberty’s and Heal’s most distinctive offerings, these designers truly testify to the vigour of the modern movement in pattern. From WoI’s news pages, here is our selection of the most exciting works by those notable wallpaper designers – the princess of print Lucienne Day, fairy godmother of the Festival of Britain; master of lino-cut storytelling Marthe Armitage; and Peggy Angus, the well-travelled graphic maverick – reissued for a contemporary audience.
‘A tonic for the nation’ is what the Festival of Britain was conceived to provide; its impact, however, can mostly be measured in terms of style. Not since the Stuart absolutists had aesthetics been so dictated by the state: clean, colourful, a little coltish – in a word, modern – was the visual order of the day. Despite these narrow diktats, everyone from architects to decorators answered the call with broad-minded aplomb – and no-one more so than the textile designer Lucienne Day, who dreamed up the inventive furnishing fabric ‘Calyx’ for it. Her inspiration: ‘the sense of growth more than the plants, the kind of upward movement’. It was a vertiginous take on pattern palpable in another creation for the showcase, the ‘Provence’ wallpaper (shown top; £160 per 10m roll) – an offering now revived by Mini Moderns for contemporary consumption. Produced with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation, it remains as much a sign of the times as a striking pick-me-up for the present. Visit minimoderns.com
The ‘mystery of pattern’, as Marthe Armitage described it, is as complex as the ebbs and flows of the ocean. It looks easy to make the horizon flow seamlessly into the sea forever, but it takes considerable skill – expertise she has refined over her 70 years as a lino-cut wallpaper designer. Using the same century-old lithographic press that she found in Brixton in the 1960s, Armitage is still producing work in her tenth decade. And, like that of William Morris, in whose footsteps she followed as master of the Art Workers’ Guild, it has eternal appeal. That much is evident in the reissuing of her classic designs as part of a ready-to-ship ‘Flexo’ wallpaper range. Here she reimagines Napoleon’s exile to Elba as a single repeating rhythmic scene. Like the island, the sea and the ups and downs of the emperor’s life, Armitage endures. Shown above left: ‘All at Sea’, £198 per 10m roll. Visit marthearmitage.co.uk
The Romantics, forged in the fire of the French Revolution, spurned boundaries: in verse, John Clare defied the enclosure of common land and ploughed a path between art and dissent; later, William Morris sowed the seeds of rebellion into cloth. Peggy Angus – ‘Red’ Peggy, as friends knew her – was their successor: born in Chile and raised in Britain, she was as happy biking across Bali as she was roving around Russia. Her work broke free of the strictures of the frame as pictures, patterns and prints traversed all surfaces in the form of wallpapers and tiles. Her governing principle was clear: art was for all. She taught young and old, and created designs for everything from schools to Gatwick Airport. Thanks to Blithfield, which continues to add more of Angus’s prints to its collection, her work still flowers with a verve that’s both revolutionary and romantic. Shown above: ‘Damask’ wallpaper, £86 per m, and fabric, £138 per m. Visit blithfield.co.uk
