Textile Designs by Susan Meller and Joost Elfers

Earlier this year, Thames & Hudson published Textile Designs, which will appeal to both professionals and amateurs alike. It has taken Susan Meller and Joost Elfers four years to compile this rich vocabulary of pattern, which forms the main body of this source book. Most of the examples are taken from swatches held at the Design Library and Design Loft in New York. Susan Meller and her late husband, Herbert Meller, created this superb collection in 1972, which continues to grow today.

FABRIC DESIGNS

The swatches catalogued at the library are categorised by motif and today half a million pattern types are referenced, with the total number of samples running into millions. This collection acts as an invaluable memory bank for designers and professionals in the textile industry.

Joost Elffers, the book's co-author, has always had an interest in recurring patterns, particularly found in modern art and also in mathematical systems and logic. This led him to write a book about the pure beauty of snowflake patterns, which have the same basic structure but vary infinitely. However, he found that patterns of fabric designs differed dramatically. The patterns were cannibalising each other, forming impure yet real configurations. After research into textile designs of different periods, Elffers soon came across Susan Meller. Their enthusiasm for their subject is bound together in this wonderful book, Textile Designs.

PATTERN

There is no such thing as an original pattern: a swatch is a gene, which spawns its own pattern. Bearing this in mind, Textile Designs is a family tree of motifs taken largely from Europe and America. However, the symbols that you find in these swatches, few examples predate 1790, are drawn from a far wider field, cutting through continents and civilisations and almost back to the beginning of time.

The motifs in this book are divided into five sections: floral, geometric, conversational, ethnic and movement and period style. This visual encyclopaedia is of use to all those seeking inspiration. Whether you are involved in the interior design or fashion world or are a designer in the graphic and visual arts, there is something here for you.

TERMS & TECHNIQUES

The very useful explanation of terms helps you define the differences between the various printing techniques. Along with a full introduction, you are sure never to look at a piece of fabric in the same way ever again.

Textile Designs acts as a testament to the creativity of the anonymous artists of the textile industry. Patterns have appeared throughout the history of visual art, yet as fabrics, they go largely unnoticed, until now.

Publication details
464 pp. Photography by Ted Croner. £29.95
Published by Thames & Hudson
ISBN 0500283656
2002

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