Henry Moore - Textiles

Henry Moore Textiles exhibition at the Sainsburys Centre Norwich (visit date 15/08/2010)

Until I saw this exhibition advertised I wasn't aware that Henry Moore had designed any textiles (I was not alone - a fact noted by the curators in the introduction area!)

Moore designed large wall hangings as well as a number of fabric designs and one of the silk squares or scarves for Ascher. Ascher printed Moore's fabrics using screen printing techniques onto silk, linen,cotton and rayon.

I found out that a serigraph describes an artist's screen printed fabric - this distinguishes it from a commercial screen print.

There are a number of links between his sculptures, ideas for sculptures and his fabric designs.

I noted how interesting it is too see how different the same design looks in different colourways and look forward to trying this out when I do printing and textile courses in the future. I have some ideas from his designs that I would like to try out myself - some of the designs are almost batik like and I have already been thinking that I would like to create some contemporary and not 'hippyish' batiks. It has made me think even more about an idea I have to use old plain fabrics from charity shops (sheets, duvet covers etc) and then print on to these to use for bunting, patchwork, quilts etc.

There were pages from his sketchbooks to look at this and this has made me think about how I will be able to use a lot of different media when I start my own textile sketchbooks - I noted that he had used pencil, wax crayons, watercolour, chalk, ink, pen and washes often within the same design - I must remember to use lots of diff things and see how the diff effects are and how they relate to diff aspects of the design and different techniques e.g I might use a wash for the background colour, wax crayon around batik, felt tip pen to show embroidery, stick on bits to show sequins, beads etc.