Throughout the Arts and Crafts era a momentous revival of medieval ideas and aesthetics took place, leading to a whole new strand of art and design whose influence continues to be felt today. Led by the writer John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite painters, who championed the social structures and technical skills of medieval artists, the…
Category Archives: TEXTILES
STRAW linen’s delicate pale gold has the iridescence of sand bleached by the white summer sun. Impressionist painter Joaquin Sorolla saw in this colour the power to recreate searing hot Spanish sunlight as it flooded windswept beaches, flapping ship sails, straw hats and freshly starched clothing in his seemingly endless cycle of summer. When balanced…
The milk-white hue of TADELAKT linen evokes the smooth, polished surfaces of Barbara Hepworth’s ground-breaking and sensuous marble sculptures. A 20th-century woman who both embodied and propelled modernism in Britain, Hepworth revealed her determination and independence early on by travelling alone to Rome in 1924 at the age of 21, after completing her degree at…
The intensity of EARTH linen’s heady, port red mirrors Mark Rothko’s late maroon paintings, in which he captured the brooding half-light of dusk as it slowly shifts and closes into night. Rothko wrote, “Often, towards nightfall, there’s a feeling of mystery, threat, frustration – all of these at once. I would like my paintings to…
The most sustainable clothes are the ones we already own. This is, of course, common sense. And anyone who has read or watched Marie Kondo on Netflix will be more than ready to hold their hands up and admit that they have enough clothes to happily see them – and their entire families – through…
RED OCHRE linen has the enveloping warmth of terracotta, a rustic colour that seems drawn from the ground like Italian tiles or dry earth parched by the sun. Yet for painter Frank Auerbach this shade of red, along with sandy yellow and burnt orange, reflects the mood and surroundings of his home in London, with…
Kombucha is an acquired taste. As you may know, it’s really not everybody’s cup of tea. But its enjoying quite a moment. We see it in a whole range of drinks these days, in supermarkets and the healthier sorts of cafes. It even has its own extremely popular hashtag on Instagram, highlighting this fizzy, whizzy…
FROTH linen’s pale blush tone is reminiscent of an apricot ripening in the white spring sunlight, recalling the luminous flesh tones in French master Edouard Manet’s paintings. As a Realist painter, Manet made the human figure his central focus, whose pale blush tones become visions of purity and light when set against deep, earthy browns…
I once attempted to set up my own little silk worm farm. I was hoping to grow my own silk as part of my research for a book I wrote, Green is the New Black: How to change the world in style. In theory, it was all very simple. I ordered some silk worm eggs…
My teenage daughter recently joined one of the Youth Strike 4 Climate days instigated by the Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg. It was part of the Fridays for Future campaign where pupils from around the world walk out of school to protest about the lack of urgency they feel the adults in power are…
Picking your way through the minefield of which fabrics are kinder to the planet, there is a lot of confusion around cotton. As consumers and makers we tend to think cotton is one of the most humble, natural and biodegradable fabrics on the market. It comes from the natural world – we can all picture…
The warm yellow hue of Zenith linen recalls the radiant, sun-baked wheat fields of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, where golden sunlight shimmers across the canvas and burns a hole in the sky. Yellow was a color of great personal significance to van Gogh, particularly towards the end of his life, when he flooded his…
Getting dressed in the morning, buying clothes in store or textiles for the home, the questions on our minds, as consumers and makers, are usually along the lines of: does it fit me? Do I like the style and colour? Is it easy to wash? As the world is waking up to the hidden cost…
Biodegradable sequins that actually shine; a knitted belt made entirely from seaweed; a pair of shoes made from an Amazonian leaf; leather made from apple peel and endless applications for pineapple leaves and other waste products from the food industry that would otherwise end up as compost or going straight into landfill. The material world…
There is a sparkling lightness of touch associated with Raoul Dufy’s practice, one that defines the joi de vivre of the Parisian Belle Epoque era he was raised in. One of his most popular quotations, “my eyes were made to erase all that is ugly,” reveals his inclination towards the decorative and beautiful, or the…
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