1951’s Calyx Fabric

Calyx fabric by Lucienne Day for Classic Textiles.

After graduating from the Printed Textiles department of the Royal College of Art in 1940, Lucienne Day’s design career faced limitations due to the effects of the Second World War. As the restrictions of the war began to ease, she started to create modern furnishing textile designs that moved away from the bleakness of the war years.

In 1951, Day was tasked to design the wallpaper and furnishing fabric for the Royal Festival Hall in London’s South Bank, a newly built concert hall where Robin Day would be creating the seating. To match Robin’s more expensive living and dining room, Lucienne conceived a new textile design called Calyx, a radical design at the time now considered a seminal piece of British post-war design.

The Calyx design draws from the traditional inspiration of botanical forms, specifically the outer parts of flowers. Transformed into abstract forms, these plant motifs are joined with thin lines representing flower stalks, creating a sense of energy and vitality reminiscent of new growth in spring, capturing the Festival’s spirit and the prevailing optimism of the time.

Lucienne Day printed textiles from the 1950s have been reissued and digitally printed in 12 different designs and many more colourways.

Please select the number of metres required in ‘Quantity’.

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