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Lucienne Day: Living Design
Curated by Professor Emma Hunt and Dr. Paula Day
TheGallery, AUB
A centenary celebration of the birth and design legacy of one of Britain’s most influential textile designers, Lucienne Day.
This exhibition traces her design career through a photographic history, which unfolds in a sequence of images drawn from the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation.
The photographs show her Diploma show as a textile student at the Royal College of Art and lead up to her career breakthrough at the Festival of Britain 1951, with her pioneering ‘contemporary’ design Calyx. They also evidence Lucienne’s prolific output of patterns for furnishing and dress fabrics, table linen, carpets, wallpapers and ceramics for numerous companies in Britain and abroad during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.
The exhibition includes a vibrant display of original silk mosaics and an impressive array of current and recent productions of her designs for curtains, dress fabrics and tea towels, demonstrating the continuing vitality of Lucienne’s design legacy.
About Lucienne Day
Lucienne Day was one of Britain’s most pioneering textile designers, who brought contemporary colour to an otherwise drab post war Britain. Born in 1917, she graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1940 and married her designer husband, Robin Day, in 1942. One of her most famous designs, Calyx, was designed for the Homes and Gardens Pavilion at the Festival of Britain in 1951 and launched her design career. From that moment on Lucienne designed fabrics, wallpapers, ceramics and rugs on a commercial basis until later in her life when she focused more on one-of designs for her silk mosaics.
About the Curators:
Professor Emma Hunt
Emma Hunt is Deputy Vice Chancellor at Arts University Bournemouth. She originally trained as a design historian with special interests in mid to late twentieth century British design particularly the role of small organisations and design identity in support of manufacture, such as The Festival of Britain, Poole Pottery and the Design and Industries Association, and the Electrical Association for Women.
The commercial aspects of design led to other research interests concerned with management, including design in higher education. Emma has held posts at the University of Huddersfield, Derby University, and AUB’s former incarnation of the Arts Institute, alongside visiting roles at Chelsea School of Art and Winchester School of Art.
Dr. Paula Day
Paula Day was born in London in 1954, the only child of designers Robin and Lucienne Day. She read English Literature at Cambridge and then moved to Cumbria, taking a Doctorate at Lancaster University in 1990.
For many years she ran her own business pioneering mountain walking holidays for women from her hillside home. She is a garden designer, poet and writer with a passion for singing and poetry in performance. Paula is the author of a book of poetry Tree, published in 2013 and dedicated to her parents.
After her parents died, she set up a design education charity, the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation, to care for their work and pass on their design legacies as an inspiration for future generations.
The exhibition is at TheGallery which sits at the heart of the Arts University Bournemouth campus.
Arts University Bournemouth
Wallisdown
Poole, Dorset
BH12 5HH