Lucienne Day Silk Mosaics 1975-1993

Lucienne Day - Black Window, (detail)

"I do regard them rather like my children... I love to hear how they're getting on." - Lucienne Day 1994.

Clothing and lifestyle store Margaret Howell on Wigmore Street, Marylebone, made for a really welcome change of venue to the usual museums and galleries I frequent in search of inspirational exhibitions of art and design. On this occasion it was to see the dazzling colours and geometric textile constructions which make up the silk mosaics displayed here by legendary textile designer Lucienne Day (1917-2010). Lucienne Day was married to the equally talented furniture and industrial designer Robin Day. Lucienne Day first made her presence felt at the Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951, winning praise for her strikingly modern printed textile designs on furnishing fabrics for retailers such as Heal's. These designs were pioneering in a period of post-war gloom. Day's designs combined abstracted plant forms with geometric motifs to create forward-looking fabrics which are still influential today in the works of contemporary artists and designers such as Angie Lewin. Day's surface pattern designs were also applied to other surfaces including ceramics, wallpapers and carpets. 

Lucienne Day - Calyx, 1951

There was a gradual decline in textile manufacturing in the 1970s and finding a new outlet for her talents Day began to create one-off textile wall hangings which use the basic techniques of construction as patchworks quilts, which are basically strips of fabric stitched together to create patterned cloths. Day consciously chose to dissociate her work with the centuries old tradition of quilting for whatever reason despite the obvious similarities, instead choosing to title her creations as silk mosaics. The term Silk Mosaic was coined because the individual units of the patched pieces were so small that they recalled the tesserae in Roman mosaics. This allusion was particularly apt because the vivid colouring of the glass tesserae were mirrored in the richly-coloured dyed silks of Day's Silk Mosaics. Although Day created the designs, she did not sew them herself, rather she outsourced their hand-crafted construction to talented seamstresses. Day also selected the silk fabrics herself, choosing the colours and textures of the fabric to purposely exploit the slubby yarns and two-tone iridescence of shot silks (woven from different coloured warp and weft) adding further levels of depth to her designs. The fabrics in the designs have held their colour well over the years, and as mentioned earlier they really do sing and appear to shine like stained glass or jewels. I find that I prefer the less literal, more abstract designs of Day's silk mosaics. The more representational pieces look a little too twee for my tastes. The technique seems to work better with Day's abstract geometric designs. I found that there were certain similarities with the work of another textile designer, the great Anni Albers, in Day's silk mosaics, and there was even one piece here which shared the same title, Meander, as my favourite textile design by Albers. This was my first introduction to this aspect of Lucienne Day's work and I found these works to be every bit as engaging as her printed textile designs of the 1950s. I shall be certainly seeking out further examples of these gorgeous geometric gems.

The Castle and Other Stories - 1979

White Door, Mid 1970s

Black Window, Mid 1970s

Mexico - ca. early 1980s

Little Tangram (Pink), 1983

Little Tangram (Pink), 1983

Museum II, 1990

Purple Shadow, 1990

Meander 1, 1980s

Tangram 3, 1985

Memory Game, 1993

Circling the Square 3, 1981

Circling the Square 2, 1981

Midnight Sun, Mid 1980s

Three Daughters of Mexico, 1992

Patchwork Quilt, 1954

Causeway, 1967

Whirligig, 1979

Whirligig, 1979

Boathouse, 1983

Boathouse, 1983

Lucienne Day Silk Mosaics 1975-1993

until Sunday 3rd November

Margaret Howell

34 Wigmore Street

London W1

Kehinde Wiley: fragments from the treasure house of darkness

Kehinde Wiley - Bound (Abalabe Alexander), 2024. detail.

I was so looking forward to this exhibition which presented a new angle to the work of Kehinde Wiley. Wiley is most famous for his portrait of former American President Barack Obama and his large, signature portraits of black men and women among stylised backdrops of foliage, or striking poses adopted from well known historical European paintings. Here the artist continues in this vein but works in the tradition of miniatures. The term ‘miniature’ only entered the vernacular in the 18th century, and derives from the Italian miniatura, ‘manuscript illumination or small picture’, which in turn comes from the Latin miniare, ‘to paint red’. Portrait miniatures appeared on illuminated manuscripts in the 15th century, and minium — or red lead — was used to colour the capital letters. Portrait miniatures first appeared in European royal courts in the 16th century, and flourished during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. By the 18th century their popularity was widespread, with leading miniature painters such as Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver and Samuel Cooper establishing themselves among the wealthy elite in London, Bath and Dublin. Miniatures were painted on grounds such as vellum, ivory and enamel, and particularly sought after by soldiers and sailors who wanted to leave their loved ones with a likeness to cherish while they were away. In the 16th and 17th centuries portrait miniatures primarily served as diplomatic gifts; tokens of love, which were sometimes exchanged during marriage negotiations; or mementoes to commemorate births or deaths. Miniatures dating to this period often bear emblems and impresa (heraldic devices), symbolising courtly love, melancholy or pageantry. By the 18th century miniatures were often worn as jewellery, on a gold chain around the neck, or set into a ring or bracelet. Sometimes they would contain a lock of hair sealed in the reverse. In this exhibition Wiley presents a series of 60 miniature paintings and two multi-part paintings, and his work translates beautifully to a smaller, much more intimate scale. The vibrant, jewel-like colour palette makes these miniatures really sing against their heavy black frames, and the subdued gallery lighting as well as the dark blues, greens and red colours of the gallery walls. The first room of the exhibition where you are confronted with a whole wall full of these portraits is particularly impactful. In this show Wiley wisely plays to his strengths portraying just single figures. This is a much more successful show than his last one with the Stephen Friedman gallery - Kehinde Wiley: In Search of the Miraculous, a none too convincing series of large seascape paintings. The subjects of the paintings here are Nigerian students from the University of Lagos. Wiley directs them to strike a variety of poses which convey a more sensitive portrayal and narrative in respect to young black men in particular, than that usually portrayed in art and the media. All of the figures are posed against the stylised, decorative floral backdrops Wiley is famous for. I can only ever recall seeing one example of a black figure in a miniature painting, the title of which was - the Russian Tsar Peter the Great with a Black Page ca. 1720 by Baron Gustav Von Mardefeld measuring a diminutive 21.6 x 16.5cm. The painting is tucked away in a drawer of one of the galleries in the V & A museum. So this exhibition like so many of Wiley's paintings are, is an opportunity to redress the imbalance of representation of black figures in art in the Western canon. These paintings are a valuable addition to the miniature portrait genre and tradition in art.

Kehinde Wiley: Fragments from the treasure house of darkness

until 9th November

Stephen Friedman Gallery

5-6 Cork Street

London

W1