EVERY PATTERN TELLS A STORY - SAY THE UK's NEW TEXTILE DESIGN GRADUATES - with GREEN GRADS

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23 Jul

**Print collections as seen largely at New Designers, London today are likely to be the personal expression of their designer, telling a very particular story.**
Take for example Laura Wigham who calls her collection "The Wild North" - with punchy patterns inspired by "wild uninhabited places" such as the Scottish Highlands and Borders and Northumberland - "ancient, dramatic and remote." Barbara Chandler - co-founder Green Grads

WRITTEN BY Barbara Chandler - Journalist and co-founder of Green Grads

Britain excels in textile design - we have sound university education, in many cases underpinned by the excellence of the historic art schools that have flourished all over the country. Lately, I've observed an upsurge in weaving at graduate shows, with a growing interest in natural dyes.

PRINT, however, is holding its own.

“And currently here the one big trend is, you could say, NO TREND”.
Barbara Chandler | Co Founder of Green Grads

Print collections as seen largely at New Designers, London today are likely to be the personal expression of their designer, telling a very particular story.

Take for example Laura Wigham who calls her collection "The Wild North" - with punchy patterns inspired by "wild uninhabited places" such as the Scottish Highlands and Borders and Northumberland - "ancient, dramatic and remote."

She has the film photography to prove it, and then the textiles and prints laced with folklore and executed in laborious lino-cutting and hand-painting. This free spirit is already up and running selling at markets, in shops and on line.

Then there is Zoe Gibb with a textile plea for African conservation.

Her collection is called Mandhari Nzuri meaning beautiful landscape in Swahili. It’s inspired by Borana, a wildlife sanctuary at the foot of Mount Kenya which has been developed by Zoe’s family for generations.

Zoe’s painterly approach boldly fuses figurative and abstract with colours of red mud, dry grass, watering holes and sunset.

Freya Butcher loves to walk along the Bathwick Hill Canal near her Bath Spa University exclaiming “I must have done it hundreds of times.” Here Freya finds “solace, inspiration and delight.”

The permanence of the architecture and landscape contrasts with the moving walkers, shifting waters and passing boats. Her favourite time is spring and she is sketching all the time…”boats, herons, swans, plants.”

The result? Her charming “Waterway Whispers” interiors collection recently on show at New Designers, and Bath School of Design.

Even the weavers are telling tales, such as Beatrice Uprichard, whose Big Country collection is intended to evoke early American pioneers, and their craft-based lifestyle.

“I'm asking for a reconnection with and respect for our land, and the production of our belongings. The isolated Western frontier was of necessity largely self-sufficient until the 20th century. One household would grown flax and spin it, weave it into linen, and then make clothes. Heritage craft connected directly to local land lasted well beyond the industrialisation of the rest of the US.”

Such collections - and there are many more - are appealingly idiosyncratic. But you do need to "know the story" to appreciate them fully. So this is a new challenge at retail level: finding ways to tell tales in pattern books, on labels and on the shop floor - and it is perhaps easier to do this on the internet.

Around 22 new graduate designers will be in GREEN GRADS IN THE NORTH at the GNCCF Great Northern Events NW ltd October 17-20 in the beautiful listed Victoria Baths in Manchester.