Category Archives: TEXTILES

POINSETTIA Linen’s full-bodied richness can breathe passionate, fiery life into the colours around it, igniting in them an electrifying, energising heat. For American born painter R.B. Kitaj this colour became a symbol of rebellious defiance, a statement of unflinching strength and determination. Such was the importance of this colour to him, with its socialist, rebellious…

Whisperingly light with just a hint of warmth, FOG linen’s pale grey formed a glistening, metallic sheen throughout El Lissitzky’s paintings and prints, speaking of his awe and wonder at the dawn of the machine age. A utopian idealist at heart, Lissitzky was a leader in the Russian Constructivist movement, believing the clean lines, geometric…

GRAY SPARROW Linen is warm and embracing, folding and hiding secrets within. German arte povera artist Joseph Beuys masterfully enveloped this slate grey into his art, investing the rugged simplicity of humble, ordinary materials with mystical, magical properties. Heaving weather beaten slabs of rock, chalk-smeared blackboards and rolls of muffling felt into complex arrangements, Beuys…

Pale, hazy tones of dawn swept across Paul Nash’s dreamy scenes, suggesting a place where all is hushed and still. The warm, pastel green of WILLOW linen was one of his recurring colours, invoking the cold light of frost-bitten grass, whispery strands of freezing fog or dreamy forms that seem to fade into distant, heavenly…

The sharp, minty tinge of MOSAIC Linen was a firm favourite with British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, lending her artworks the biting transparency of freshly cut ice. A pioneer of abstraction during the interwar period, Barnes-Graham returned again and again to craggy, rocky, or glacial landscapes, tracing jagged contours with spidery, meandering lines and mirroring wide…

KRISTA NATURAL linen has the creamy freshness of homemade custard or Cornish cream. British painter Ben Nicholson brought this colour’s glowing light into his carefully structured, minimal canvases and relief sculptures, investing them with an intimate warmth that seems somehow instantly familiar. Whether portraying landscapes, interiors or still life subjects, his artworks were an exercise…

Bold, vibrant and filled with optimism, PACIFIC BLUE linen mirrors David Hockney’s dazzling, eye popping blues. Celebrated for his playful and adventurous colour palette, Hockney spent his early years as an artist living and working in LA. Moving between the UK and US in his later years, the vivid colours of California stayed with him…

AGAVE linen’s cold, watery green flowed through Edgar Degas’ paintings, illuminating grassy banks, café scenes and private interiors with the fresh sheen of Parisian light. Though his subjects were hugely varied, Degas’ paintings pivoted around moments of suspended tension, from racehorses to jittery dancers and precariously balanced nudes. Silvery green tones helped him invest this…

Ice cold and shot through with mint, the sharp blue of MOONFLOWER linen played a vital role in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s paintings, bringing fresh light into his rippling water and wide open skies. A leading painter of the Dutch Renaissance, Breugel pioneered a new brand of genre painting that was larger and more imaginative…

The hazy, lilac blue of WISTERIA linen seeped into the artworks of the late 19th century Symbolist era, casting diffused light that suggests the silent land of dreams. French painter Edouard Vuillard was part of this group; his quiet, intimite scenes were often cast with heather, blue and lavender tones, lending them a hushed air…