ROSE SMOKE’s sweet, tart pink coloured Robert Delaunay’s kaleidoscopic art, filling it with the bright freshness of summer. Delaunay was a leading figure in the early 20th century School of Paris, and his art encapsulated the joyful anticipation of the era, a time when rising industrial change promised a life of danger, thrill and adventure….
Category Archives: TEXTILES
Contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley makes art that celebrates life, with ridiculously exuberant characters, joyful colours and indulgent patterns that are impossible to ignore. Taking his cue from the great history painters of the past, Wiley explores the emotive potential of fabric, allowing it to wrap around his heroic characters and lend them masterful qualities of…
Expressionist artist Chaim Soutine made meaty, muscular paintings loaded with great slabs and strokes of paint; they twist, curl and contort across his canvases in an endless state of flux. Like many artists of the early 20th century Soutine painted a heightened, exaggerated version of the real world, one lit up by iridescent colours and…
The roots of embroidery are often traced back to ancient China. It was the Chinese who first began cultivating and producing silk, a magical substance that could be woven into the softest fabrics, or spun into threads as soft and fine as human hair. Some of the very first embroideries were also produced in China…
Dazzling shades of blue like CERULEAN linen were a hallmark feature of Pablo Picasso’s late art, colouring it with the fresh light of the Mediterranean Sea. In his later years Picasso settled in the South of France, and, much like his contemporary Henri Matisse, the vivid, intense colours he encountered there ignited his artworks with…
Sean Scully’s art has a dense, hard-won quality that seems innately bound to the earth. Warm, metallic shades of grey like that of PEWTER Linen dominate his works of art, stacked into loose grids that resemble the hand-made structures of human civilization: drystone walls, slate rooves or careworn paving stones. Throughout his long career, Scully…
In our final article on the role of fabric in Japanese ukiyo-e art, we examine how the genre of ukiyo-e evolved and changed in the 20th and 21st centuries, and the continuing role fabric played in its development throughout this period. Although the dominance of ukiyo-e in Japanese culture largely faded from around 1900 onwards,…
Sonia Delaunay was an unmistakable talent, a star of the 20th century who moved seamlessly between disciplines. Underpinning her practice was a fascination with colour and movement, and the ways it could capture the anticipation of rising modernity in Paris. The colour combinations she explored were often unusual and unexpected, creating jarring, clanging clashes of…
Embroidery has an incredibly rich and varied history spanning thousands of years, and it is still widespread and popular today. In fact, of all our world’s ancient traditions, it is one of the longest surviving. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at this epic lifespan – embroidery has the power to entirely transform clothing and fabrics,…
20th century Russian pioneer Natalia Goncharova had an astonishingly varied and prolific career, spanning painting, printmaking, costume, set design and more. Pulling together all these diverse ideas was a desire to celebrate her Russian heritage, and its place in an increasingly modern society. Russian fabrics were among her most favourite and cherished objects, particularly those…
Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the 20th century’s greatest pioneers, spearheading a bold new language of abstraction that would alter the course of art history. He was particularly fascinated by the sonorous possibilities of colour, and how symphonic arrangements of light and dark could convey rich and complex emotions. No colour was out…
In this latest edition on fabric in ukiyo-e art, we will look into the fascinating art of the 18th and 19th century Katsukawa School, and the vital role Japanese costume and silk played in its development. Founded by the great Miyagawa Shunsui, the incredible art of the Katsukawa School spanned paintings and prints with a…
Pierre Bonnard’s intimiste paintings invite us into his own private world, a magical place where colour and light roam free. Though he is perhaps best celebrated for his scorching colour palette that heightened reality into a kaleidoscopic dream, he also brought in bright, cool shades like that of MIST Linen, letting them breeze through his…
Pattern, in all its multicoloured, decorative glory, is at the heart of David Hockney’s art. It was there in his art as a young, keen student in 1950s London, and it’s still alive and well in the art he makes today (only Hockney could reimagine the Yorkshire landscape as a series of eye-wateringly bright patchworks)….
In Marc Chagall’s swirling world of imaginative wonder, the rich, bluish purple hue of MAJESTY Linen appeared often, staining his canvases with a weighty, dramatic intensity. Throughout his career as a leading modernist, colour was a key component in Chagall’s art, not observed from nature but sprung forth from deep within his mind, expressing the…
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04 May 2025 @ 2:12 am by Kelly Singh
14 Nov 2021 @ 1:00 am by Chinese Embroidery Hoop Installation: Step-by-Step Guide
07 Jun 2016 @ 5:33 am by Linen Pie Carrier Tote Free Sewing Pattern
27 Apr 2025 @ 9:21 am by Debbie Hogan
13 Jul 2017 @ 5:00 am by Samantha Arrington