Tag: textile design

Vintage shaving cloths

Vintage 1950s linen barber shaving cloths

We bought these vintage shaving cloths this week. Kept in traditional barbers, they were used for wiping cut-throat razors.

Vintage 1950s Irish linen barber shaving cloth made by Dunmoy Vintage 1950s linen barber shaving cloth with inscription: This is the cloth To wipe the blade To spare the towel To save the money To pay for the house That you built.

We thought they were fabulous – each having wonderful graphic illustrations featuring facial hair in its myriad of forms… and in one case, a little verse extolling the money-saving virtues of razor cloths over towels.

Vintage 1950s linen barber shaving cloth Vintage 1950s Irish linen barber shaving cloth made by Dunmoy. The Fitz Razor Line

These vintage shaving cloths are made of linen and date from the 1950s/60s era.

Vintage 1950s linen barber razor cloths

Having dealt with vintage homewares for many years, endless linen items from Northern Ireland have passed through our hands – manufacturers such as Dunmoy and Ulster Weavers. In addition to tea towels and place mats, it seems that razor cloths were also part of their massive output.

Vintage 1950s linen barber razor cloths

We thought that they had lots of potential as wall decoration in a vintage styled barbers or hairdressers… or would be equally at home in a domestic bathroom. They could be suspended from a row of small hooks – or perhaps, better still, simply framed and hung – singly or perhaps in small groups.

Designer Desire: Sven Fristedt

Montage of Sven Fristedt textile designs | H is for Home

Sven Fristedt is one of the most successful and prolific textile designers to come out of Sweden in the mid-20th century.

Since the mid-1960s, Sven Fristedt has designed dozens of fabric designs; primarily for IKEA and Borås Wäfveri. He began at Borås in 1965 and remained there until 1990, acting as the factory’s artistic leader between 1975 and 1977. Plexus, (the design is shown above – a repeating starburst-type pattern) which was the company’s first silk-screen print was also his first commercial design. It proved to be hugely successful. Amongst his other output for the company include Frutto, Frots i trädgården, Mitt Zoo, Oppo, Ormen, Pompelona and Päråna.

He designed for IKEA from 1968 to 1985 as is responsible for design lines such as ALFI, GLADA BLAS, MYRTEN and SKYAR.

In 2013, he collaborated with Hemtex, producing a gorgeous design with a repeating pear motif.

In a 2014 interview with the magazine, Scandinavian Retro, he shared:

Naturally I was influenced by others. Marimekko did fantastically dramatic things, and Josef Frank did some great pieces for Svenskt Tenn. I discovered the designer Ken Scott at a trade fair in Milan. He designed some really beautiful patterns for Falconetto… I am surprised about how many good things I did, at least there’s nothing I’m ashamed of.

Because they were produced in such large runs, his designs are readily available on eBay and Etsy.

Portrait of Sven Fristedtcredit

Additional image credits:

Bukowskis

What’s inside Rebecca’s Cupboard?

Win a Rebecca's Cupboard kitchen set from Kate Guy

Hello, and welcome to our last competition of 2019 – where did the year go? This month, we have a kitchen textile bundle that’s worthy of a domestic goddess… or god, for that matter!

The set – that comes complements of printmaker, Kate Guy – comprises an organic cotton tea towel, tote bag and apron in Kate’s gorgeous Rebecca’s Cupboard design.

Kate Guy's 'Rebecca's Cupboard' textile pattern

Kate explains the inspiration behind her Rebecca’s Cupboard print:

The design is a linocut print I made of a friend’s kitchen shelves, she lives in the South of France and is an excellent cook. They grow a lot of their own produce and so she also makes lots of preserves and pickles. They have a small vineyard and make their own wine and grape juice, her husband is a keen forager; always coming home with wild mushrooms, asparagus and other local delicacies in season. Her daughter keeps bees and makes her own honey and her son is a keen fisherman, often providing a fresh wild caught trout for the lunch table. This rustic idyll is captured in this print.

If you’d love to win the bundle, tell us in our comments section below who tackles the kitchen chores in your house.

Rebecca’s Cupboard kitchen textile bundle

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Designer Desire: Viola Gråsten

Montage of designs by Viola Gråsten | H is for Home

Viola Gråsten (1910-1994) was a leading Finnish textile designer. Her most well-known pattern is probably Oomph (pictured at the very top of the montage above) which was printed in a number of colourways.

Some of the fabric patterns that she designed include Sparv (1959) and Hassel for Ljungbergs; the striped Snark blankets (see above) for Tidstrand; Tulipuu, Såpbubblor, Casa (1954) and Kalas (1955) for Swedish department store, Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) and Pelagonia (1965) and Kastanj (1966) for Mölnlycke Tuppen AB.

Her eye-catching rug designs produced for Elsa Gullberg’s Textiles and Interior in Stockholm have come to be known as Gråstens colours. She also produced a great many rug designs for the aforementioned, NK Textilkammare.

There are currently a number of her textile designs available on Etsy – including rugs, blankets and lengths of fabric.

I’ve come across a book by Anne-Marie Ericsson, Viola Gråsten och modernismen i svensk textilkonst (Viola Gråsten and modernism in Swedish textile art), that delves into the history of her creations.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Additional image credits:

Artnet | Auctionet | Bukowskis