A new exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester features textiles by Lucienne Day and furniture by her husband Robin. I chanced upon a Woman's Hour feature this morning about the exhibition, which is available on iPlayer (about 20 minutes into the programme) and was fascinated to hear about the life of a couple who were 'the most celebrated British designer couple of the post-war era'.
Personally I love Lucienne Day's work, although I know not everyone does. What I had not appreciated was the interaction between her work and that of her husband, a relationship wonderfully described in the Woman's Hour feature by their daughter. Nor did I even know that later in her career she made a deliberate change of direction into the production of wallhangings which she called 'silk mosaics', pieced from delicate silk fabric, designed by her and produced by assistants. In an article in the Independent from 1993 these silk pieces are described:
A typical Day silk mosaic is about 6ft by 4ft and might be made of up 6,000 patches of shot silk, sewn together by a team of assistants. Paper templates on which each design is based are left inside the silk, so the compositions, when finished, are truly a mosaic of overlapping and interwoven materials. Day works with Thai or Indian silk; her favourites are the vivid shot silks of Mysore. These feature two different colours, in warp and weft, and so shimmer with different colours depending upon how light falls on them and where the viewer of a mosaic is standing.
The Pallant House Gallery have some great information and slideshows on their website.
There is also a biography of the Days, with a timeline of their work, on the Design Museum website.
Contemporary Days: The Designs of Lucienne & Robin Day from Design Onscreen on Vimeo.
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