Two designers considered among the most significant textile creatives in the UK's modernist period, will be honoured in a major exhibition this autumn, at the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft*.
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| Hilary Bourne and Barbara Allen setting up loom (used in The Lady 1951) Image: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft |
Located in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England, Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft will be marking ten years since its major redevelopment with the opening of the exhibition: Double Weave: Bourne and Allen's Modernist Textiles, specifically on the museum's co-founder Hilary Bourne (1909 – 2004) and Barbara Allen (1903 – 1972), her partner in life and creative practice.
Double Weave: Bourne and Allen's Modernist Textiles is on from 16 September 2023 to 14 April 2024.
The two designers ran an internationally successful textile studio, designing and making a variety of fabrics for the UK's top retailers, such as tweed for Fortnum & Mason, furnishing fabric for Heals and scarves for Liberty’s.
The turning point in their career came in 1951, when they won the competition to design and make curtains for the newly built Royal Festival Hall. They went on to win commissions to make the costumes for the multi-Oscar winning 1959 film Ben Hur and the interiors of the UK’s first jet planes.
In short, they were two of the most significant textile designers of the modernist period, yet they remain largely unknown - until now. The exhibition will give space to their story. It will speak to the invisibility of women as leading modernist designers, as well as how women's intimacy informs creative pursuits, and it has been brought together by a series of curators.
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| Hilary Bourne and Barbara Allen's Royal Festival Hall Sample 1951 Photo Credit Sara Morris Image: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft |
Curator, cultural producer and academic E-J Scott is spearheading the project and in a style reflective of the vast and vibrant women’s networks of the time.
E-J has assembled a collective of the country’s most inspiring fashion and textile historians to co-curate the show: Jane Hattrick (dress historian), Shelley Tobin (textile curator and dress historian), Veronica Issac (course leader MA Fashion Curation at UAL), Jane Trais (women’s historian) and Susanne Rowland (costume historian).
Objects on display will be from Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft’s collection, with some key loans from other institutions. Work by two contemporary artists will complement the exhibition.
An immersive installation by textile artist Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings will greet visitors in the Introductory Gallery, featuring textiles coloured with natural dyes using techniques pioneered by Bourne and Allen. It will explore her own experience as a Black deaf artist with Sudanese heritage, using layering of text and images in English, BSL and Arabic. The experience of being seen and not seen, and of textiles often being dismissed as "domestic" or "women’s work" is part of this story.
Sussex-based weaver and dyer Poppy Fuller Abbott has created a collection of textile samples in the style of Bourne and Allen’s work which will be used as handling samples in the exhibition. Visitors can also watch a film of Poppy at work on the loom.
Steph Fuller, Director, Ditchling Museum said “In this 10th year since the creation of Ditchling Museum of Art+ Craft in its current form, it’s the perfect moment to celebrate Hilary Bourne our co-founder, and showcase the fantastic Modernist textiles she created with her partner Barbara Allen. This is a rare chance to see this work and discover their Modernist legacy, alongside a new textile installation by Omeima Mudawi-Rawlings which references their lives and techniques, bringing them into a new contemporary context.”
*Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft is home to a permanent collection that showcases the work of artists and crafts people living and working in Ditchling – a village which nurtured some of the 20th century’s most innovative and creative ideas in crafts and design. The museum presents two new exhibitions a year alongside the permanent collection.
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