“The Textile Blog”

LATELY, I’VE ENJOYED reading The Textile Blog: Design, Decoration and Craft, which, oddly enough, is only partly about textiles. Instead, the author, John Hopper, has a more catholic taste. Here are some articles that caught my eye:

Sicilian Decoration as seen by Matthew Digby Wyatt
Ceramic Mosaic Work from Cairo
The Anatomy of Pattern by Lewis Foreman Day
Sleeping Beauty Tiles by Edward Burne-Jones
Bullerswood Carpet by William Morris
Islamic Geometric Mosaics
The Geometrical Framework of Pattern
The Supremacy of Indian Decorative and Pattern Work
Educational Courts at the Crystal Palace
The 1853 Dublin Exhibition of Art-Industry
A Celebration of Pugin's 200th Anniversary
The Crocheted Lace D’Oyley
Decorative Endpapers of the Early Twentieth Century
Arabic Calligraphy as Decoration
The Designer as a Cross-Discipline Artist

Hopper also shows Catholic interests:

Ceramic Tile Designs by A W N Pugin
French Stained Glass of the 13th Century
Augustus Charles Pugin and Gothic Ornaments
Embroidered Altar Cloths of the 1860s
Pattern Work and the Medieval Mediterranean
Decorative Embroidery of Thomas Becket
Medieval English Stained Glass
English Tile Pavement from 1340
Vestment Decoration by A W N Pugin
Decoration of English Stone Crosses
Tessellated Pavement from Meaux Abbey
Byzantine and Romanesque Decoration
The Stylised Medieval World
Medieval Stained Glass Pattern Work
Embroidered Robes of Thomas Becket
Decorative Patterned Floors of Venice

The blog concentrates largely on Victorian England and the early Modern period. But rather than taking a starting point from the classical arts of Greece and Rome (which we now know was severely misinterpreted by the Renaissance and Enlightenment), it instead finds the full flowering of the decorative arts in the Medieval period, with roots extending across all of Europe and half of Asia.

The blog’s author argues that artists ought to be multidisciplinary, and should not be mere specialists in one narrow field or another. We find this variety of in many of the biographies found on the blog, with single individuals designing textiles, wallpapers, floor tiles, furniture, ceramics, stained glass windows, and even entire buildings.

The Textile Blog is both interesting in its own right and is inspirational as a sourcebook for design.