Elizabeth Wilhide - The Complete Pattern Directory: 1500 Designs from All Ages and Cultures

Lively or sedate, free-flowing or rigorously ordered, pattern is where color and texture meet and make music. From the first rhythmic marks pressed onto clay vessels and the multiple handprints stenciled onto the walls of caves, to the latest digital designs, a delight in pattern-making has been intrinsic to the decorative arts since time immemorial. Pattern is as present in the details of the built environment as it is in woven and printed textiles; it is as apparent in the original expression of individual artists and designers as in the reiteration of long-standing craft traditions the world over.

Pattern gives pleasure. This is not surprising. Evident in the arrangement of petals on a flower head, in the branching growth of stems and vines, and in the spirals of a seashell, pattern is inherent in the natural world and inextricably linked to our delight in it. At some deep level, it is also how our minds work. Humans are hard-wired to organize what they see and experience into some kind of coherent narrative. In this sense, pattern is expressive of the human need to forge connections, to arrange distinct and disparate elements into compositions that are much more than the sum of their parts.

Throughout history, patterns have come in countless permutations of motif, colorway, and scale. Yet what all have in common is the regularity of repetition, the insistent rhythm that animates a flat surface with a sense of movement and vitality, and gives it depth. A patterns repeat may be as simple as a regular grid of evenly spaced dots, or as elaborate as a branching design whose diverse elements take time to tease out, where the play of foreground against background is as complicated as a visual dance.

Pattern is also intimately bound up with technology and process. It is a way of doing things as much as an end in itself. Just as it is possible to sense the way a tool must have been pressed into the malleable surface of damp clay from the marks it left behind, the method of tie-dyeing fabric can be inferred from the concentric rings of color created by the rubber band or string used as a resist, and the origins of certain geometric designs owe much to weaving. Until the Industrial Revolution and the arrival of mechanization, pattern was often created with the application of a great deal of labor and time: hours of stitching, often communal, went into comforters, and the same would have been true of a wide range of other printed, woven, or embroidered textiles, the finest and most accomplished of which would have been expensive.

Grand Thistle | Timorous Beasties |

With mechanization, wallpaper and textiles could be produced faster and in much greater quantities. These developments broadened the market and lowered prices, bringing such goods within the reach of many more households. From the late 18th century well into the 20th century, millions of yards of printed cotton calico were manufactured in Lancashire mills and exported around the world.

Another significant technological development was screen-printing, which emerged before World War II and came into widespread use after the conflict. In turn, digitalization has brought a new dimension into play, allowing patterns to be printed on a wide range of different materials and products.

Arts and Crafts Movement

Perhaps the quintessential pattern designer of all time is English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist William Morris. As the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, Morris left an enviable creative legacy and has influenced successive generations of designers around the world. Many of his patterns are still in production today, more than a century after his death in 1896; he is probably the one pattern designer with whom most people are familiar. Able to distill the natural world into designs that never stoop to a false realism but which instead retain a sense of flat surface, he had a unique awareness of how to arrange foreground and background elements so that the result was full of vitality.

To modern eyes, Morris patterns might seem elaborate, dense, and even busy, but he was in many ways a great simplifier. The Arts and Crafts movement was based on the honest expression of construction and materials. Morriss golden ruleHave nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautifulwas not an argument against decoration, but a call for it to be applied appropriately.

Appalled at the poor quality of what was coming out of Britains factories, Morris consciously rejected mass production in favor of hand-making, which made his goods expensive. His wallpapers and fabrics were block-printed; some are still made the same way. Similarly, he rejected the harsh chemical aniline dyes, which first appeared in the mid-19th century. He used traditional vegetable dyes, which were softer and faded in synchronicity with each other. To this end, he consulted old herbals and conducted experiments with different recipes. In the 1920s, British designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher followed in Morriss footsteps, and revived block-printing and vegetable dyeing.