Mid2Mod: Lucienne Day

I started this blog September 6, 2010. Some of you have been readers since the beginning. Others have come on board later. From now through the end of the month, I'm going to be on a short blogging break. Not only am I in the middle of a big volunteer project, I'm also trying to help get the new store open, so I've decided share some of my favorite posts from the past four years. I'll throw in a few new photos for you longtime supporters who read the posts when they were first published.

(First posted 9/14/2010)

Lucienne Day (1917-2010) was a British textile designer whose vibrant and innovative work changed the industry.

Her designs, which were used for fabric, carpet, wallpaper and ceramics, were inspired by the modern art of Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró and Alexander Calder, as well as by geometric forms and nature. Her Calyx pattern was launched at the 1951 Festival of Britain and helped launch her career. It was given the International Design Award of the American Institute of Decorators.

Day is known for her ability to combine the traditional British love of nature...as seen in the works of William Morris or John Ruskin, for example...and express that in abstract design.

When interest in 20th century design reemerged in the 1990s, she and her husband of almost 70 years Robin Day, the famed furniture designer, became mentors to young designers.

In Jonathan Glancey's farewell to Lucienne Day at the time of her death in January of this year, he described the woman and her work:

Lucienne had a wonderful way of looking severe, and then breaking into a warm smile and happy conversation. I suppose her best fabrics – and that's pretty much all of them – are a bit like that: disciplined, intelligent, diligently researched, but also warm, playful, colourful and delightful too.

From theguardian.com and classictextiles.com