Style combination · Pairs well

Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern × NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

The British contemporary prints of the same years share screen-printed, all-over repeats in limited flat colour; borrow their spindly drawn line for a lighter variant of a ruled NK stripe.

From the research on NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil)

Mix them and make something Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print, their arrangement from Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern, the finish from Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern (Lucienne Day and the Festival Pattern Group) NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil)

Type from Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern
Colour from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print: Rectilinear
Non-representational
Composition from Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern: All-over field
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern: Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern

Index

Londrina Solid; Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern used Festival display lettering used alongside the patterns (posters, catalogues, signs), not in the repeats and Festival display lettering used alongside the patterns, not in the repeats

Text · NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

The reduced, geometric household textiles of NK's textile department in Stockholm under Astrid Sampe: small ruled units, stripes, checks, arrows and thin outlines repeated evenly, mostly on screen-printed linen and cotton, some on woven linen, in black and white with a few flat accents of red, blue or yellow. Sampe's late-1940s fabrics followed Mondrian; the 1954 Signerad Textil collection put artists' names, Aalto's among them, on industrially printed cloth. Quiet, rational cloth with no focal point and no type in the repeat.

Jost; NK Textilkammare Geometric Print used No lettering in the repeat and The printed selvedge mark naming maker, pattern and designer in capitals, such as 'TEXTILKAMMARE MADE IN SWEDEN "14/6" ALVAR AALTO DESIGN' on Aalto's 14/6 (MFA Boston 2012.847)

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print, with a counter-accent from Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern (Lucienne Day and the Festival Pattern Group) NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil)

#f2eee4 ground · 36%
#161616 ink · 14%
#e5b51f accent · 18%
#d4532a accent · 14%
#1f4f9a accent · 10%
#8f8b82 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2eee4;
  --ink: #161616;
  --accent-1: #e5b51f;
  --accent-2: #d4532a;
  --accent-3: #1f4f9a;
  --accent-4: #8f8b82;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

The two styles

A cream poster is covered with an interconnecting pattern of thin black stems, semicircular flowers, rounded leaves and small dots in olive green, mustard yellow and burnt orange. Widely spaced olive lettering near the upper right reads “OPEN DAYS.”

1951–1960 · Western Europe Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern (Lucienne Day and the Festival Pattern Group) The post-war British pattern language launched at the 1951 Festival of Britain. Lucienne Day's 'Calyx' for Heal's replaced the revived Victorian floral with spindly lines linking small cup and seedpod shapes, after Klee, Miró and Calder, while the Festival Pattern Group turned X-ray crystal-structure diagrams into wallpapers, dress fabrics and furnishings. Screen-printed in a few flat inks on olive, ochre or white grounds, it set the light 'Contemporary' look of British homes through the 1950s; in the 1960s Day turned to brighter colours and simpler forms.

An edge-to-edge geometric pattern alternates red and blue blocks with narrow black vertical bars, broad black horizontal bars, and small yellow squares on a cream background. The word “RUTNÄT” occupies a gap in the pattern near the upper right.

1937–1971 · Northern Europe NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil) The reduced, geometric household textiles of NK's textile department in Stockholm under Astrid Sampe: small ruled units, stripes, checks, arrows and thin outlines repeated evenly, mostly on screen-printed linen and cotton, some on woven linen, in black and white with a few flat accents of red, blue or yellow. Sampe's late-1940s fabrics followed Mondrian; the 1954 Signerad Textil collection put artists' names, Aalto's among them, on industrially printed cloth. Quiet, rational cloth with no focal point and no type in the repeat.

More combinations

With Festival of Britain 'Contemporary' Pattern

With NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

Every style combination