STYLE NV A tribute to Lucienne Day

Yesterday marked the first year anniversary of the death of British textile designer, Lucienne Day and today STYLE NV would like to lay tribute to such a remarkable woman.




Inspired by abstract art, she pioneered the use of bright, optimistic, abstract patterns in post-war England, and was eventually celebrated worldwide

Désirée Lucienne Conradi, was born on 5th January 1917, in Coulsdon Surrey. She came from a fairly well off family, her mother was English and her father Belgian. She went to a convent school and from a very early age she was focused on designing. She studied at Croydon School of Art and then, from 1937 to 1940, she studied at the Royal College of Art, where she was a top student. It was there, in her final year, that she first met the furniture designer Robin Day, whom she later went on to marry.

Lucienne drew on the English tradition of patterns based on plant forms that went back as far as Morris. She took motifs drawn from nature and transformed them into something absolutely new. Part of her success was the implied message of regrowth and optimism for a Britain only just recovering from war.

She was also deeply influenced by European abstract painters like Kandinsky, Miró and Klee. It pleased her to think that people who could not afford to buy a painting for their living room could at least own a pair of abstract patterned curtains. Many of Day's printed fabrics were made in long production runs, which kept the price affordable. She made the link between mass production and fine art.

http://www.stylenv.co.uk/blogs/blogEntry.cfm?b=56