At the Fashion And Textiles Museum, London
Bursts of bright floral fabric in the form of these beautiful quilts was exactly what I needed on a cold grey afternoon in London. The eyes can’t take in all the detail in these incredible works of art. Just like a classical painting, the quilts give a different perspective from standing far away to taking a close up shot with my phone.
I wanted to hold and feel the intricacies of the stitching but of course didn’t! From tiny scarlet strawberries to a peacock made of flowers.
Something about creating fabric – be it knitting or needlepoint – was far too motivating for me to abandon and return exclusively to easel painting. I could express all my passion for colour and form in these soft human textures and longed to create bigger and better examples
Kaffee Fassett, Dreaming in Colour, 2012
The above quilt ‘Levitate was inspired by sci-fi television. I created this image as if standing in front of a huge screen looking into vast space’. (Danny Amazonas, 2022). This is the biggest quilt in the collection and is the most striking due to the black background. It is at the far end of the gallery so it is only when getting closer that I spotted the intricate florals that made up the spheres of the planets. Creating the impression of bursts of volcanic rock on Jupiter.
Watching the film about Kaffe and his fellow designers, they enjoyed painting a wide collection of vintage pottery. This quilt joyfully captures the paintings shown in the video. Incredible to recreate the feel of the painting with floral printed fabric.
On my way home I bumped into my neighbour and raved to him about the exhibition. As a product designer he wanted to know how the prints were created. The video in the gallery explained that the Kaffe Fassett Collective draw and then paint their designs on canvas using gouache paints. The result is these beautiful art works displayed in the upstairs gallery. Each one with the various colourways of the print. However I couldn’t answer my neighbour’s question. I didn’t know how the hand painted designs ended up on fabric.
Kaffe admitted he didn’t have a smart phone let a lone a computer so I assumed one of the Collective must have recreated the designs in a digital format so they could be printed. Perhaps I missed this part in the video and I can’t find the information online but this is how the prints were produced onto fabric when I worked at Cath Kidston. I enjoyed a previous exhibition at the Fashion and Textiles Museum called Chintz. This included videos of how the elaborate floral prints are replicated onto wooden blocks and hand printed in a traditional method. I think if the Kaffe fabrics were printed in this way they would have described it in length during the exhibition. If any one knows, please get in touch.
I managed to catch the exhibition in it’s last week, it is on until Saturday 12 March. The exhibition is then travelling to Edinburgh so a chance to see it there and a good excuse to visit beautiful Edinburgh too.