Inspirational designers- Jacqueline Groag

Along with posts on what is going on in my studio, I mentioned posting about inspirational designers, well Jacqueline Groag is my first designer. I love her work and the bold use of colour and form, some of which has a lovely sense of naivety inspired by her childhood.

I was introduced to Groag's work whilst at the John Lewis design archive, whilst researching my dissertation. In the late twenties and early thirties she designed textiles for Wiener Werkstatte and produced many hand printed lengths for leading Paris fashion houses. However during the war Groag and her husband had to flee Vienna and returned to their home town of Prague then and eventually came to England. Groag found a warm welcome here in the UK and was influential at the time of the 1951 Festival of Britain and is associated with other female designers of that time, Lucienne Day, Mary White and Marian Mahler, all of which I have come across at the archive and fallen in love with their work and become an avid fan of the pre and post war period of design.

Images: top paper dolls: rubyassata.wordpress.org, bottom Pebbles: ftmlondon.org

A few changes

I love having my blog, but have noticed that since I've graduated I've not put as many posts up. This is partly down to the fact I've been quite busy with other things such as moving house. So I've decided I perhaps need to breathe more life into the old blog. I'm going to try out things such as "On my drawing table" so you get a little peek at what I'm up to, perhaps do a post on an artist or designer that I've found interesting or inspiring or both. I've also thought of posting an image that has particularly inspired me that week, plus any other exciting things I get up to or find on the way. Hopefully then I will be back to posting more often and it will look more exciting.

Today I've got an image of what is "on my drawing table" at the moment, which is a koda trace ready for a print that I'm going to embroider into for the show in March. I've got a fascination with numbers and letters at the moment and have enjoyed putting them into my work. From now on pictures of "on my drawing table" will be in a box along the right hand side of the blog.