Untitled (Textile Design No. I)
This conversation is connected to Untitled (Textile Design No. I).
Frances Hodgkins made this textile design during or around her time working for the Calico Printers' Association in Manchester in 1925. Hodgkins was a New Zealand-born painter who had been living in Europe since 1901 and was almost broke when the fabric design job came along — she'd already booked a passage back to Australia. The design is a geometric composition of interlocking triangles and chevrons in shades of blue, purple, lavender, and black against a pale blue ground, with white triangular forms at the center. It has the precision of a pattern repeat and the confidence of someone who'd spent decades painting. Hodgkins went on to become one of the leading figures in the British avant-garde of the 1930s and 1940s.