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