Primerose Bordier (1929 – 1995) French textile designer

Advertisements

Primrose Bordier (1929 – 1995) was a French designer known for her colourful and innovative home textiles.

Education

She studied at the Atelier Charpentier in Paris.

Biography

Between 1949 – 54 she worked as a textile designer.

1954-57, as a stylist at Cosserat.

1958-60, at Au Printemps department store.

During a trip to New York in the early 1960s for Le Printemps, Ms Bordier noted the use of colour in sheets and towels, at the time, was unknown in Europe.

Primrose Bordier Design in House Beautiful January 1972
Primrose Bordier Design in House Beautiful January 1972

Paris, in 1962, she set up her textile design studio, CDM (Coleurs Dessins Modéles). Bordier’s reputation was for sound design at a reasonable price; they, together with her five associates, specialised in the design of medium-priced furnishing textiles, household linen and wallpapers. Her bed-linen collections had delicate, often humorous designs in subtle colour combinations that became classics. Upon starting her company in 1962, she persuaded manufacturers to produce coloured sheets and towels.

She designed tableware for Descamps.

Selection of cushion covers Primrose Bordier
Selection of cushion covers Primrose Bordier.

Recognition

In 1976, Ms Bordier was the first woman in design to receive the French Legion of Honor.

Sources

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.

Primrose Bordier, Linens Designer, 66. (1955, November 24). New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/24/nyregion/primrose-bordier-linens-designer-66.html.

Schoeser, M. (1991). French textiles: from 1760 to the present. Verlag nicht ermittelbar.

Advertisements

More on Textile Designers

Annie Coop – Australian Textile Studio

Annie Coop, an Australian textile studio, offers bright, intricate, and lively fabric designs having both whimsical and sophisticated aspects, created by Sydney-based designer Annie Cooper. The print-to-order textiles are suitable for home and commercial designs.

Keep reading

Alastair J.F. Morton (1910 – 1963) British Textile Manufacturer

Morton joined his family’s Morton Sundour Fabrics in 1931 and oversaw the company’s first screen-printed fabrics. He was the artistic director and principal designer of Edinburgh Weavers in Carlisle, which was established in 1928 as Morton Sundour’s creative design unit from 1932 to 1935. From the 1930s, he was a supporter of the Modern movement,…

Keep reading

Masakazu Kobayashi (b.1944) Japanese Textile Designer

Masakazu Kobayashi studied at the University of Arts, Kyoto, Japan. He manifested traditional textile techniques and aesthetics in his work. Between 1966 and 1975, he worked as a textile designer for Kawashima. His 1982 fabric evoked komon, a textile dyeing technique which uses paper patterns with small motifs.

Keep reading

Zandra Rhodes (b.1940), British fashion and textile designer

Zandra Rhodes studied lithography and printing at Medway College before going on to the Royal College of Art to study textiles, graduating in 1964 during the height of the pop movement. She made a paper wedding dress that cost less than two shillings, motivated by this trend and the work of painter Roy Lichtenstein in…

Keep reading

A Short History of Wallpaper

Before 1840, nearly all the world’s wallpaper came from France, where it was hand-printed, using blocks and sheets of paper to produce a limited line of patterns. Making wallpaper by hand was a costly process, and only the very wealthy could afford to buy it.

Keep reading

Gertrud Preiswerk 🇨🇭 Swiss Textile Designer

Gertrud Preiswerk was a Swiss textile designer she was born in Basel. Between 1926 and 1930, she trained in-the weaving workshop, Bauhaus, Dessau, under Gunta Stolzl. In 1929, she took a summer course, Johanna Brunsons’s Weaving School, Stockholm. She studied the operation of silk power looms at Vereinigte Seiden Webereien. She settled in Hildesheim; in-1931,…

Keep reading

Oskar Petrovich Gryun (1874 – 1931) Russian 🇷🇺Textile Designer

Oskar Petrovich Gryun (1874 – 1931) was a Russian Textile Designer. Education He studied at the Central Art Institute of A. Stiglitz, St. Petersburg, to 1897. Biography Between 1899-1919 and 1922-31, he worked as a textile designer in the textile combine known as Troikhgornaya Manufacture, Moscow. He participated in several Soviet exhibitions abroad. Sources Byars,…

Keep reading

Owen Jones (1809-1874) British architect & Designer

Owen Jones was a 19th-century British architect and designer renowned for his Arabic-influenced ornamentation. Notably, he served as the Superintendent of Works at the 1851 Great Exhibition and joint director of the Crystal Palace’s decoration. His most influential work is the book ‘The Grammar of Ornament’.

Keep reading

More design articles

Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.