Mid-century textiles share a trick: they look drawn by hand but are built on a loose grid, so a few big shapes float on an open ground. The look came from several places at once, including postwar optimism, new synthetic fibers, and an urge to bring modern art into the living room. Here are the designers and groups worth knowing from the 1940s to the early 1960s.
Where the look came from
The 1951 Festival of Britain gave the style a public stage. A group of manufacturers called the Festival Pattern Group made textiles, wallpapers and ceramics with patterns based on molecular crystal-structure diagrams, so atoms and lattices became domestic decoration. Lucienne Day's Calyx, shown at the festival, is covered in our famous textile designers list. Around the same time Finnish and Swedish firms were bringing flat, graphic prints to the market; see Scandinavian textile designers.
Designers and what each added
Alexander Girard. Girard led the textile division at the furniture company Herman Miller from the early 1950s. His fabrics are bright and geometric, with a folk-art sense of play: blocks of saturated color, simple repeated shapes, and a taste for the handmade. He was also a collector of folk art.
Jack Lenor Larsen (1927-2020). Trained at Cranbrook, Larsen set up his own firm in the early 1950s and made texture the point: open weaves, handwoven character, and fabrics that caught light. He is the counterweight to the print-led designers on this list.
Knoll Textiles. Knoll built a textile line in the late 1940s that sat alongside its furniture and drew on weavers and artists, including Anni Albers. The fabrics were woven and printed in a restrained modern style meant to sit with the furniture: pattern as structure, not decoration.
Frank Lloyd Wright. The architect's Taliesin Line for F. Schumacher & Co. in 1955 turned the geometry of his buildings into fabric and wallpaper. It is a reminder that mid-century pattern often came from architects.
Ray Eames. Alongside her furniture work with Charles, Ray Eames drew printed textiles in the late 1940s, with an artist's loose, simplified touch.
Dorothy Liebes and Marianne Strengell. Both worked at the border of handweaving and industry. They are profiled in women who shaped textile design.
The motif vocabulary
| Motif | How it is drawn |
|---|---|
| Atom or starburst | Dots at the end of thin spikes, often alone |
| Boomerang and kidney shapes | Rounded, asymmetric, tilted at different angles |
| Abstract leaves and pods | Stylized, flat, on a thin stem |
| Grids and plaids | Unevenly spaced lines in 2-3 colors |
| Calligraphic scribble | A single loose line over flat shapes |
A palette to draw from
- Mustard #D9A21B
- Olive #7A7A3A
- Burnt orange #C4572B
- Teal #2A7F7F
- Charcoal #2E2E2E
- Cream ground #F1E8D2
Use three or four of these at once, not all six. Charcoal or cream makes the best ground; the others are the accents. Two pairings that read as period-correct are mustard with teal on charcoal, and burnt orange with olive on cream. Avoid pure black and bright white, which make the look feel modern in the wrong way.
Drawing it now
- 1Keep the ground open. Fill about half the tile with motif and leave the rest empty.
- 2Vary the tilt. Rotate each shape a different amount, and avoid putting them in rows.
- 3Draw loosely. A slight wobble in the line is the whole charm.
- 4Scale for use. Motifs from 2 to 6 inches (5 to 15 cm) suit curtains and cushions; keep them smaller for dresses.
- 5Check the seam. Open grounds make misaligned repeats obvious, so test the tile at 3 by 3.
The mid-century patterns, retro patterns and geometric patterns categories are close matches. With Describe It in Pattern Weaver you can write something like "asymmetric boomerangs and atom starbursts on charcoal, mustard and teal" and have a seamless tile in about 20 seconds, then use Restyle to change the finish.
Explore related pattern styles
