As I sit looking out at the miserable grey sky and snow coming down horizontally, almost blizzard like, I wish I could be sitting cosily in the ‘mammoth chair’ or in one of the rooms decorated completely using wool in the Wool House exhibition at Somerset House. The exhibition was curated and styled by Arabella McNie for The Campaign for Wool. The campaign was launched in 2010 by Patron HRH The Prince of Wales to ‘unite the international textile industry to promote real wool as the superior natural and sustainable fibre for fashion, interiors and the built environment’ (exhibition leaflet). On entering the expansive and impressive courtyard of Somerset House,…
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Pre- and post-War radical British Textiles
Two exhibitions in London are currently displaying iconic 20th Century British textiles: After Bloomsbury, Rugs from the Omega Workshops 1913 – 1916, at Somerset House, and Designing Women: Post-War British Textiles at the Fashion and Textile Museum. Both exhibitions, even though displaying textiles of very different eras, represent radical change and avant-garde. The collection of rug designs from the Omega workshops founded by Roger Fry in 1913 on display at Somerset House were only ever sketched out, and not realised at the time. In 2009, the rug company Christopher Farr brought the designs to life producing rugs based on the idea of the drawings. The bold, bright and geometric designs of these rugs,…
