Eileen Ellis (b.1933 ) was a British textile designer.
Biography
Between 1952 and 1954, Ellis was a textile department student at Central School of Arts & Crafts, specialising in weaving (she took a National Diploma in the subject).
She worked with Marianne Straub at Hornsey School of Art (now Middlesex Polytechnic). She taught at Central School on occasion starting in the late 1950s.
She began her career in Zika Asher’s design studio (1957-1959), where she worked on printed and woven textiles for the couture industry and Marks and Spencer collections.
Weaveplan
She and three colleagues founded Orbit Design Group in 1960 to sell interior print and weave designs. Ellis and Ann Bristow founded Weaveplan a decade later (a later addition to the Orbit group). Bristow left the studio in 1973. Ellis took over as director, employing four designers before Weaveplan relocated from London in 2001, and Ellis became the sole designer.
Weaveplan developed the seating fabrics and textile colour strategy for BAA’s UK airports and all of British Airways’ textile elements and fabrics for Aer Lingus, Cathay Pacific, United Airlines, and Virgin Airways, among others. TGV Sud-Est trains in France are also outfitted with Weaveplan-designed textiles.
Recognition
Ellis won the Textile Institute’s Design Medal in 1985 after becoming an RDI in 1984. She received the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Weavers in 2002.
Ellis generously donated a significant number of weave samples spanning her career to the Central Saint Martins Museum and Contemporary Collection.
Sources
Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.
Eileen Ellis. – Makers A-Z: individuals and organisations – UAL. (n.d.). https://collections.arts.ac.uk/people/134/eileen-ellis.
More British Textile Designers
-
Morton Sundour’s beautiful British furnishing fabrics
It was founded in 1914, by Alexander Morton who reorganised his Alexander Morton and Company Ltd, with Morton Sundour as “the major off-shoot”. It was run by his second son James Morton.Read More →
-
Robert Yorke Goodden (1909-2002) British Architect Designer
He was in private practice since 1932. Wallpapers, domestic machine-pressed glassware for Chance Bros., 1953 coronation hangings for Westminster Abbey, gold and silverwares, ceremonial metalwork, glassware for King’s College, Cambridge, 1961 metal-foil murals for the oceanliner Canberra, engraved and sandblasted glass murals for Pilkington. Read More →
-
Shirley Craven (b.1934) British Textile Designer
Shirley Craven (b.1934) was a British textile designer. She studied at Kingston upon Hull and the Royal College of Art, London. Craven ‘pioneered an aesthetic more akin to painting than textiles’, breaking ‘all the rules’.Read More →
-
Marvel at the beauty of the Snakeshead pattern by William Morris
Morris used Indian silks and a red and black colour scheme to create Snakehead, featuring his favourite flower, the fritillary.Read More →
-
Elizabeth Peacock (1880 – 1969) British textile designer
She was best known for the eight banners commissioned by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst for the Great Hall in Dartington between 1934 and 1938. She was a spinner, dyer, and weaver and an outstanding teacher from 1940 until 1957.Read More →
-
Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx (1902 – 1998) British textile and graphic designer
Designs for London Underground seats. She studied painting and wood engraving at the Royal College of Art in London, as well as at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.Read More →
-
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,…
-
Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) Czech textile designer
Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) was a Czech textile designer and ceramicist. Born in Prague she studied in Vienna at the Kunstgewerbeschule during the 1920s. In 1937 she moved to Paris where she designed dress prints for Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiparelli and others.Read More →
-
Lucienne Day (1917 – 2010), influential 🇬🇧 textile designer
Lucienne Day was one of the most influential post-war British textile designers. She developed a unique style of pattern making. Read More →
-
Minnie Macleish (1876 – 1957 ) British textile designer
She collaborated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Constance Irving at London’s Foxton textiles and Amsterdam’s Metz store. Macleish was a prolific designer during the 1920s and 1930s, creating patterns for Morton Sundour fabrics.Read More →
-
Honiton Lace the beauty of complex patterns
Honiton lace is a type of bobbin lace made in Honiton, Devon, in the United Kingdom. Its ornate motifs and complex patterns are created separately, before being sewn into a net ground. Common motifs include daisies, roses, shamrocks, ivy leaves, lilies, camellias, convolvulus, poppies, briony, antwerp diamonds, trefoils, ferns, and acorns.Read More →
-
Peter McCulloch (b.1933) British textile designer
In the early 1960s, he taught at the Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall. Some of his textiles incorporated contrasting colors in small dots suggesting printed circuitry, as in his 1963 Cruachan fabric produced by Hull Traders.Read More →
-
Allan Walton (1891 – 1948) British painter, decorator, architect and textile designer
He commissioned some of the most innovative screen prints of the 1930s, designed by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, as a principle of Allan Walton Fabrics. Read More →
-
Theo Moorman (1907 – 1990) British Weaver and Designer
Theo Moorman was a devoted artist with a lifetime of experience. She created her technique over a wide range of designs and textural combinations, exploring its potential. A new invention was every piece of work, and they were always full of vitality.Read More →
-
Eileen Ellis (b.1933) British textile designer
Between 1952 and 1954, Ellis was a textile department student at Central School of Arts & Crafts, specialising in weaving (she took a National Diploma in the subject).Read More →
-
Margaret Simeon (1910 – 1999) British Textile Designer
She worked as a freelance designer of garment and furnishings textiles. Allan Walton Textiles, Edinburgh Weavers, Campbell Fabrics, and Fortnum and Mason were among her clientele. She taught textile printing at the Royal College of Art.Read More →
You may also be interested in
Christine Van der Hurd – British textile designer – Encyclopedia of Design
Christine Van der Hurd is a British textile designer and is professionally active in New York and London. She studied at the Winchester School of Art, Hampshire, until 1973. Van der Hurd settled in the USA in 1977. She designed textiles for clients, including Jack Lenor Larsen, Donghia, and Kenzo.
Evelyn Wyld (1882 – 1973) British Designer textiles and rugs – Encyclopedia of Design
Evelyn Wyld (1882 – 1972) was a British designer who was born in 1882. She studied at the Royal College of Music, London. She settled in Paris in c1907. She and Eileen Gray travelled to North Africa, where they learned weaving and wool dyeing with natural colours from Arab women.
French fabrics in the art deco style
Ruhlmann used the same basic motif-a stylized Cedar of Lebanon tree set within an irregular circle-on this textile and related wallpaper (MMA 2005.334), though on the textile each motif is offset by an added circle of dots. The pattern was produced in alternate colorways.
Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA)
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York houses one of the world’s most important collections of modern art, with six curatorial departments: Architecture and Design, Drawings, Film and Media, Painting and Sculpture, Photography, and Prints and Illustrated Books.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.