Yesterday I was able to grab an hour or so and go to a nearby gallery. It's on the campus of a local Art and Design school. A friend of mine got her degree and teacher's license there, so I knew where it was, but had never looked into it. It's a curious labyrinth of brick buildings, vaguely Spanish Colonial but with a certain Art Deco edge. Is there a name for this period? This -ism? I assume it was built in phases starting in about the 30s.
They were exhibiting about 20 pieces from Lucienne Day, who is apparently known as the tipping point in postwar furnishing design. I was really drawn in by her abbreviated suggestions of organic forms, the rhythm and color so evocative of the textiles that I remember as shabby leftovers in my 60s childhood. Of course, I dismissed that aesthetic witheringly, in favor of, what, psychedelic flowers? I don't know. I guess at the time, I probably wasn't paying much attention.
(As an aside, in the Mousetrap, a tiny mountain cabin where we lived when my parents were SO young and poor, the cupboards were stocked with Fiestaware dishes. These had been cast off from my grandmother's house, and provided for the summer renters for whom its knotty pine, uninsulated walls were originally intended. I didn't appreciate any of THAT then, either.)
So, Lucienne Day was a textile designer, and her husband, Robin Day designed furniture. You can see some of her work here, and some more of it here. It is inspiring.
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