Vintage Patterns 1950s

Book excerpt: A neat collection of 1950s pattern, this book covers the heyday of postwar design where an analytical approach to design, with a lightness and freshness, combined with whimsical imagery and idiosyncratic subject matter. The designs and influences of the print gurus of the time – Lucienne Day, Robert Stewart and Maija Isola of Marimekko – are all covered. The creativity of the period – the beginning of the atomic age – is given full expression in this collection of hundreds of designs. It is an essential sourcebook for contemporary design practitioners and students. The book contains exclusive illustrations and original artwork from designers as well as finished prints. Each short chapter introduction is followed by a range of illustrations with captions to give provenance and relevance. The patterns are arranged in the following chapters: Narrative and Novelty (prints from cowboys to spacemen); Abstraction (abstracted, distorted and attenuated forms used in pattern); Artistic license (the influence of artists such as Miro and de Kooning on fashion print); Kinetic prints that showed the influence of the era's 'mobiles, doodles and spasms'.