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Friday Gem from the Stoddard – Templeton Design Archive: Black and White

By Michelle Kaye on December 10, 2010 • ( 0 )

This week’s gem from the Stoddard-Templeton Design Archive is a beautiful black and white design. It was one of the first designs I came across when I started work on the project and with the stark use of just black and white, it really stood out as something special. It’s difficult to get an idea of the scale of this design, but it’s actually well over a metre long and we think the section we have is just one piece of a much larger design. Unfortunately there’s no signature or date so we don’t know for sure who it’s by, but for me, it’s reminiscent of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hannah Frank and Aubrey Beardsley. It’s possible also that the designer was influenced by Japanese textile design, as can be seen in the use of stylised, organic forms. We’ve recently come across some Japanese “Komon” stencils and patterns in the collection, and after some research it seems that “Komon” means “fine pattern” and refers to a type of Kimono with a very fine, repeated pattern throughout (see here for more information on “Komon”). The design we have features a similar technique of using tiny dots to build up texture and shading, so it’s possible that the designer of this week’s gem was influenced by these stencils and patterns.