13
March 2025

The Post War Textile Visionaries of Modern Art

Welcome to The Arts Society Cambridge
Thursday, March 13, 2025 - 10:45
Churchill College, Cambridge
Storey's Way Cambridge CB3 0DS
Online Event

This lecture discusses how UK textile designers influenced fashion after the war and as a result brought Modern Art into our streets.

The extent that textiles played a role in widening the appreciation of Modern Art has been underplayed.  The French Fauvists influenced fashion between the wars through Cornwall based Cryséde, and at Cresta Silks - Nash, Sutherland and Heron were all commissioned to produce new designs.
 
Alastair Morton’s Edinburgh Weavers helped fuse modern artists with textile patterns, bringing modern art into the home through their powerful images.  The Czech emigrees Zika and Lida Ascher’s work with Moore and Matisse, also brought Modern Art through fashion out onto the street.  In the 50s and 60s a new generation of female textile designers inspired by European and American art movements, captured the colour, innovation, and vibrance that was the swinging Sixties.

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Mr Ashley Gray

Ashley Gray is a leading specialist and curator in the key art discipline of Modern Textiles and their history. He is a regular vetter at international fine art fairs and served on the Fair Committees of BADA, The Works on Paper Fair and on the BADA Council. He is regularly invited to lecture on the subject both in the UK and the US and sits on the advisory board of The Frances Neady Collection at FIT, New York. As a curator and archivist, he works with institutions and foundations on conservation and exhibition projects; most recently as co-curator of Material Textile: Modern British Female Designers’ and Material Textile: Creativity, History & Process, both with Messums Gallery, Common Thread at New Art Centre and From Bauhaus to our House at Cromwell Place. He also curates the acclaimed exhibition Styled by Design that celebrates the innovation of Modernist textile design alongside a comprehensive lecture programme that accompanies the exhibitions.