Redrafting Domestic Life: Women Textile Designers and New Professional Enterprises in Early 1970s Britain

Abstract

This article considers screen printed home sewing kits and domestic items in Britain in the early 1970s, focusing on women designers and their customers negotiating the demands of domestic and working life. The ambiguous status of domestic labour, particularly in relation to clothing and textiles, means this topic is under-researched, even though in this case it coincides with second-wave feminism and attacks on the normalisation of gendered practices. As print initiatives, these businesses can also be evaluated against ‘counter-cultural’ graphic design of the period, showing a similar transition from modern and Pop influences in the late 1960s to folkloric and historical styles. In establishing self-contained business enterprises within family contexts, we see new working lives created by female designers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See also G. Naylor, ‘New Shapes for the Table’, Design, 108 (December 1957), pp. 40–43.

2 The notion of ‘the new petite bourgeoisie’ seeking middle-class status through domestic creativity and the ‘art of living’ comes influentially from P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge Kegan and Paul, 1984), pp. 354–65.

3 For Clothkits, I am indebted to Anne and Finn Kennedy for email exchanges, and a research visit to their personal archive, alongside continued conversations. Clothkits was sold in the late 1980s — see n. 60 for details. For Tuar Fabrics (founded by Sylvia Chalmers c. 1928–2008), I am indebted to John Pegg, Chalmers’s stepson, who assisted the day-to-day running of Tuar Fabrics in Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, for access to the studio premises. I also thank Sylvia Chalmers’s sister, Hilary, for information about Sylvia’s early training, interests and opinions alongside a personal archive of textiles and artworks. John and Hilary allowed me to understand the working circumstances of Chalmers’s life in a way that GSA archival material did not.

4 On the rapid decline in textile production in the 1970s, see L. Jackson, 20th Century Pattern Design: Textile and Wallpaper Pioneers (London: Mitchell Beazley, 2002), pp. 167–81; also ‘Textiles for the Seventies’, Design, 255 (March 1970), pp. 40–49: ‘being a full time designer for printed textiles is not possible’, p. 47.

5 For an overview of relevant historiography, see K. Fallan, Design History: Understanding Theory and Method (Oxford: Berg, 2010); L. Taylor, The Study of Dress History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). For sources on domestic craft and ‘women’s work’, see, for example, C. Buckley, ‘Children’s Clothes: Design and Promotion’, in The Gendered Object, ed. P. Kirkham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 103–11; B. Burman, ‘Introduction’, in The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking, ed. B. Burman (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 10–11; T. Harrod, The Crafts in Britain in the 20^th Century (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); J. Attfield, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2000). See also G. Adamson, The Invention of Craft (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) and S. Knott, Amateur Craft: History and Theory (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). For (some) current resonances, see C. Campbell, ‘The Craft Consumer: Culture, Craft and Consumption in a Postmodern Society’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 5, no. 1 (2005), pp. 23–42.

6 P. Dalton, ‘Housewives, Leisure Crafts and Ideology: De-skilling in Consumer Crafts’, in Women and Craft, ed. G. Elinor, S. Richardson, S. Scott, A. Thomas and K. Walker (London: Virago, 1987), pp. 31–36. Dalton decried the ‘de-skilling’ of housewives who were cut off from ‘dominant cultural practices’.

7 Fiona Hackney addresses Pen Dalton’s position at the end of ‘“Use Your Hands for Happiness”: Home Craft and Make-Do-and-Mend in British Women’s Magazines in the 1920s and 1930s’, Journal of Design History, 19, no. 1 (2006), pp. 23–38; see also F. Hackney, ‘Quiet Activism and the New Amateur: The Power of Home and Hobby Crafts’, Design and Culture, 5, no. 2 (2013); and F. Hackney, ‘Making Modern Women, Stitch by Stitch’, in The Culture of Sewing, ed. B. Burman, pp. 73–96.

8 See n. 18: we can see that these issues did probably bite hardest against white middle-class educated women due to the conflict of educational achievement with social and class pressure.

9 C. Boydell, ‘Free-lance Textile Design in the 1930s’, Journal of Design History, 8, no. 1 (1995), pp. 27–42; S. Worden and J. Seddon, ‘Women Designers in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s’, Journal of Design History, 8, no. 3 (1995), pp. 177–93.

10 Jobling and Crowley state bold surface decoration on consumer items meant ‘graphic quality’ equalled fashionability. P. Jobling and D. Crowley, Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation since 1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,1996), p. 214.

11 S. Bradbury, ‘The Cold Light of Commerce’, Design, 319 (July 1975), pp. 44–45 presented (disillusioned) follow-up interviews with young designers three years after the first Texprint exhibition in 1972.

12 A. McRobbie, ‘Bridging the Gap: Feminism, Fashion and Consumption’, Feminist Review, 55 (1997), pp. 73–89; see also M. Oppenheimer, ‘Histories of Design Pedagogy’, Virtual Special Issue for Journal of Design History, 31, no. 1 (2016), pp. e1–e24.

13 For the historiography on methods, see H. Renders and B. de Haan, eds, Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory and Life Writing (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

14 The first women’s liberation conference was held in Oxford in February 1970, S. Rowbotham, Dreams and Dilemmas: Collected Writings (London: Virago, 1983), pp. 38–39. The textile enterprises discussed had already launched by this point, before feminism became a fully organised movement with accessible publications (see also n. 14 and n. 20).

15 Rowbotham, Dreams and Dilemmas, p. 37. Rowbotham’s writings from 1968–1983 are an excellent guide to the conflicted and painful web of allegiances and desires played out during her youth, education and working life.

16 Taylor, The Study of Dress History, p. 79.

17 C. Langhamer, ‘The Meanings of Home in Postwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History, 30, no. 2 (2005), pp. 341–62, p. 341. The 1960s and early 1970s was the period of ‘peak housewife’ in Britain and the United States. J. Lewis, ‘Marriage’, in Women in Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Harlow: Longman, 2001), pp. 69–85; I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Housewifery’, in ibid., pp. 149–64 notes the nuclear family of male breadwinner and female full-time housewife obtained only briefly at this period and only in white middle-class households.

18 Stephanie Spencer discovered from interview first that academic training for girls in the 1950s and 1960s remained almost exclusively middle-class, and second that many such women who did attempt to pursue a professional career after education struggled with feelings of alienation. S. Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2005), pp. 165–71. See also B. Skeggs, Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable (London: Sage, 1997) and L. Johnson and J. Lloyd, Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the Housewife (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004).

19 D. Sandbrook, State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain 1970–1974 (London: Penguin Books, 2010), p. 9. Sandbrook argues that the drab stereotype of this era is a myth of conservative and neo-liberal journalistic writing. He points instead to the egalitarian moves of the Labour Government such as the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976.

20 For legislation, see Sandbrook, State of Emergency. For various women-run publications, such as grassroots Shrew (1969–78) or Spare Rib (1972–93), see https://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/node/520 (accessed 27 February 2024) and https://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/node/234 (accessed 27 February 2024). For one of the most influential early publications on domestic labour and its (non-)value, see A. Oakley, Housewife (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974). See also R. Parker and G. Pollock, eds, Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement 1970–85 (London: Pandora Press, 1987 [1974]), p. xvi, for a first-hand history of this period with facsimile press coverage, for example, Peter Cole, ‘Porn Squad Eyes Women’s Lib Art’, Guardian, 9 April 1970.

21 A. Kosloff, Screen Process Printing (Cincinnati, Ohio: The Signs of the Times Publishing Company, 1958); see also F. Carr, A Guide to Screen Process Printing (London: Vista Books, 1961), pp. 15–19; G. Lengwiler, A History of Screen Printing: How an Art Evolved Into an Industry (Cincinnati, Ohio: ST Media Group, 2013). Stencil has long global traditions. See, for example, E. Kindel, ‘A Reconstruction of Stencilling Based on the Description by Gilles Filleau des Billettes’, Typography Papers, 9 (London: Hyphen Press, 2013), pp. 28–65. For Japanese ‘hair-screen’ methods, see A. Humphrey, Katagami: The Craft of Japanese Stencil (Leeds: ULITA, University of Leeds, 2017).

22 Boydell, ‘Free-lance Textile Design in the 1930s’, pp. 27–42; As Boydell explains, this was a new professional outlet for women freelance designers in the 1930s trying to escape artisanal hands-on studio craft production into more distanced design for industry where printing was carried out by specialist trade printers within prestigious companies, not by designers. Large-scale mechanised screen printing for mass-market production did not take off until after the Second World War.

23 M. Farr, Design in British Industry: A Mid-century Survey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), pp. 142, 146–47 and passim. Farr examined all aspects of design education, production and retailing, but only in sectors deemed significantly large, such as furnishing, not dress textiles. He praised GSA Textile Department for its progressive approach fostered by Allan Walton, School Director 1943–1945, a textile designer, entrepreneur and founder member of the Council of Industrial Design (CoID, set up by the Board of Trade in 1944). Robert Stewart was Head of Textiles from 1949 to 1984. See also L. Arthur, Robert Stewart Design 1946–95 (London: Glasgow School of Art Press and A&C Black Publishers, 2003), pp. 20–42. For UK centres of fashion and textiles teaching, see also C. Breward et al., Swinging Sixties (London: V&A Publications, 2006), p. 15; M. A. Hann and K. Powers, ‘Tibor-Reich — A Textile Designer Working in Stratford’, Textile History, 40, no. 2 (2009), pp. 212–28.

24 I am indebted to Robert M. Finnie (Bob), for technical and graphic information about this period in textile education at art school. Finnie studied Textile Design at GSA from 1954 to 1957 and became a staff member in GSA Textile Printing Department as demonstrator after graduation, giving technical support and supporting innovation in screen printing under the direction of Robert Stewart (see n. 23). Finnie emphasised the hands-on development of expertise and the very ‘basic equipment’ — often improvised — during this period.

25 The technically oriented ‘Basic Design’ mindset was influential across all departments at this time. Acquiring knowledge through tools, processes and systems, and new techniques such as cut and paste appropriations through photo capture of mass media sources, changed design language. See R. Yeomans, ‘Basic Design and the Pedagogy of Richard Hamilton’, Journal of Art and Design Education, 7, no. 2 (1988), pp. 155–73.

26 Bob Finnie, interview with author, 2 July 2019.

27 Ibid.

28 For the contentious subject of unwelcome colour and base textile decisions imposed by manufacturers encountered by freelance designers, see Bradbury, ‘The Cold Light of Commerce’, pp. 44–45.

29 Farr, Design in British Industry, p. 142 and passim.

30 One of Chalmers’s high-end commercial designs can be viewed on the Victoria & Albert Museum website, V&A collections: ‘Palamos’, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O269270/palamos-furnishing-fabric-chalmers-sylvia/ (accessed 4 August 2016), captioned ‘Furnishing Fabric, 1953, Accession Number: CIRC.175-1954’. Chalmers was elected to membership of the Society of Industrial Artists in 1958. GSA Archives, GSA DC 068/1/6. For accounts of a ‘professional trajectory’, see n. 9 and n. 74.

31 N. Whiteley, Pop Design: Modernism to Mod (London: The Design Council, 1987), pp. 35–38; B. Jones, The Unsophisticated Arts (Toller Fratrum: Little Toller Books, 2013 [1951]).

32 See D. Brett, On Decoration (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press,1992); also K. Hadjiafxendi and P. Zakreski, eds, Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013).

33 See Chalmers’s student thesis, GSA Archives, GSA DC 068/1/3. See also GSA DC 068/9/43, Chalmers’s gouache design in red and black (and white as base colour). Hatfield House in Hertfordshire was a stately home and grounds with characteristic Jacobean architectural features that housed examples of Elizabethan/Jacobean textile items due to its association with Queen Elizabeth I, N. Pevsner, Hertfordshire (London: Penguin, 1977).

34 For tourism and ‘overlooked’ popular heritage souvenirs in the post-war period, see R. Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 2012), p. 92 which mentions Laura Ashley screen printed tea towels; A. Peach, ‘Craft, Souvenirs and the Commodification of National Identity in 1970s Scotland’, Journal of Design History, 20, no. 3 (2007), pp. 243–57.

35 The Needlework Development Scheme (NDS) was run by embroidery thread manufacturers J. & P. Coats of Paisley, near Glasgow, from 1934–1939 and 1944–1961. The scheme produced numerous booklets for home embroiderers and schoolteachers, and amassed many embroidered items from across the world, with strong representation of Eastern European styles. Bulletins and pamphlets were released three times a year between 1949 and 1961. Detailed information on publications and exhibitions is available in the Catalogue of Embroidery Given to the Museum by the Needlework Development Scheme (Edinburgh: Royal Scottish Museum, 1965). Booklets are available at GSA Archives and Collections NDS/PUB/13.

36 NDS, Contemporary Scandinavian embroidery by Ulla Kockum in folk idiom, white wool on a red background, GSA Archives and Collections GB 1694 NDS/F/45. Abstracted ‘birds’ motifs were fairly common in design at this time, but they can be related in appearance to the Greek linen twentieth-century table runner in satin-stitched coloured silks (also from the NDS collection and shown in Fig. 6), GB 1694 NDS/F/23.

37 See n. 35.

38 The Catalogue of Embroidery gives examples of ‘Designing from traditional embroidery’ such as an eighteenth-century panel from Crete with scrolling linear patterning of animals, birds, and flowers, p. 14.

39 I am indebted to Eirene Hunter (formerly Paton), graduated from GSA 1953 and Margaret Beck (formerly Margaret M. Stewart) graduated1954, for interview testimonies, May 2019. Examples of their student textile designs are available in GSA Archives online.

40 For more information on UAC, see the Unilever Art, Archives and Records Management GB1752.UAC — The United Africa Company Ltd. Also N. Stylianou, ‘Export Textiles in West Africa’, in British Design: Tradition and Modernity after 1948, ed. C. Breward, F. Fisher and G. Wood (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 64–67.

41 Hunter never returned to textile design even though she used her art school training in a successful freelance art practice that she has continued to the present. In his interview, Finnie remarked on women’s anxiety about work in the 1950s caused by the Marriage Bar.

42 John Pegg and Hilary Chalmers, interviews and emails with author, April 2016–June 2018. For a press photograph of the Tuar Fabrics workshop in Thornhill from the Dumfries and Galloway Standard and Advertiser, 2 October 1985, p. 10, see GSA Archives, GSA DC 068/6/v1. The image shows the home-made print table (assembled from Dexion) in the former barn, with a length of printed cloth in progress, looping up into the distant drying racks far up in the rafters. Chalmers sits in the foreground surrounded by the local work team.

43 John Pegg recalled regular attendance at trade fairs in Ingliston, Edinburgh and in Birmingham. John Pegg, conversation with author 27 June 2016. See the ‘trade extra guide to Ingliston’ entry 109 (Tuar Fabrics) in Craftwork: Scotland’s Craft Magazine, 21 (1977). The Small Industries Craft for Rural Areas of Scotland (SICRAS) trade fairs were held at Ingliston from 1974 onwards. NEC Birmingham has hosted a Gifts Fair Expo since 1976 and Craft, Hobby and Stitches International trade fairs annually since the 1980s. For the promotion of craft in Scotland between 1970–1990 which was more focused on halting economic decline than the individual makers, see A. Peach, ‘The Making of Modern Scottish Craft: Revival and Invention in 1970s Scotland’ (PhD diss., Robert Gordon University, 2017). Available from: https://openair.rgu.ac.uk (accessed 24 August 2022).

44 Like Hunter, Beck left work on marriage.

45 Margaret Beck designed Dovecot product lines, for example an abstracted linear bird cushion cover design with strong visual similarities to Chalmers’s bird placemats; she also printed, finished, packed and carried out general tasks. After marriage, Beck cared for her family before re-training as a teacher. She maintains a steady output of high-level craft work in embroidery and silversmithing as a craft interest.

46 As Andrea Peach has described, the craft revival in Scotland had some distinct characteristics, most notably an emphasis on ‘commercial craft’ as a lifeline for depressed rural areas. Alongside the growing importance of tourism and heritage sites as support for local economies in Scotland, this created conflict within the craft community. Although that debate takes us away from the central focus of this article, the notion of ‘commercial craft’ appears here in a positive light, as an innovative development of industry-minded textile training in screen print, adapted to smaller-scale enterprise. Peach, ‘The Making of Modern Scottish Craft’.

47 Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s.

48 The Employment Protection Act of 1975 came into effect in the UK on 1 July 1976, giving limited protection to pregnant employees in eligible categories. Nonetheless, women were still routinely sacked for becoming pregnant and still face career and pay equality today due to pregnancy and childcare.

49 Laura Ashley, originally founded in 1953 as Ashley Mountney, initially produced small items such as headscarves and placemats, http://www.lauraashley.com/uk/about-laura-ashley/heritage/page/heritage (accessed 2 August 2020). See also see Anne Sebba, Laura Ashley: A Life by Design (London: Faber and Faber, 2013 [1990]). Clothkits was founded in 1969, see the short article and interview with Anne and Finn Kennedy in ‘Cut Out for Success’, The Observer, 11 June 1972: 24 ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.

50 Samuel, Theatres of Memory, p. 92. For a discussion of Laura Ashley as a relatively recession-proof textile enterprise in the mid-1970s, see J. Visick, ‘The Trouble with Textiles’, Design, 329 (May 1976), pp. 36–40. For the complex interaction of myth and reality in the Laura Ashley narrative of domestic life, see Sebba, Laura Ashley.

51 Anne Kennedy listed these skills from art school: ‘Basic design and drawing principles/Making and printing with silk screens/Making and printing with blocks/Dyeing cloth, batik, discharge printing/Weaving, yarn dyeing and cloth construction/Keeping records of recipes for dyeing and printing/Art history. What was completely absent was advice about starting a business, however.’ Anne Kennedy, email to author 17 November 2019.

52 Anne Kennedy, interview with author, 21 November 2019.

53 Ibid.

54 Max Tilke was an artist/decorator and costume illustrator active in avant-garde bohemian circles in Weimar Germany whose publications focused on ethnic and folk dress, for example a 1925 volume on the costumes of Eastern Europe. Tilke’s comprehensive and striking Costume Patterns and Designs was first available in translation in English in 1956 and — as a handsome and extremely heavy volume — was an important reference item in art school libraries, where Anne encountered these.

55 For ‘Design for the Under-Fives’, see Design, 233 (May 1968), p. 83, ‘Letters’ from Philip Fellow, Head of the Exhibitions Division, Council of Industrial Design; also Design, 240 (December 1968), Christmas edition with cover image ‘Under-Fives’ exhibition poster by Ron Hackett; also I. Gray, ‘Play Prototypes for the Under-Fives’, Design, 240 (December 1968), pp. 36–41.

56 Finn worked on production, packaging, sales, catalogue and general photography marketing and publicity, including sending out packages of photographs, kits and copy to the editors of the women’s and home pages of the quality press. In addition he worked on systems and equipment within the company, the acquisition of workshop and storage space, as well as the ongoing process of designing and opening new shops. Clothkits opened a series of shops — apart from their first shop in Lewes within the workshop and warehouse location — in key customer locations such as Oxford, Winchester and Covent Garden between 1981 and 1987. Anne Kennedy, email to author 25 May 2023.

57 Anne Kennedy, interview with author, 21 November 2019. The catalogue listed the Clothkits No. 1 pinafore dress and pants; the cape and muff set; a needlecord dress, bag and hairband; matching nylon tights; a raincoat and hood; and decorated bell-bottomed trouser; all kits sized for ages 2–5 years. Clothkits Catalogue Winter 1969–70.

58 ‘EGO: FOR KIDS’, The Observer, 23 November 1969, p. 33, which featured an ‘oriental-looking waistcoat’ as a special offer; ‘EGO: Observer Clothkits’, The Observer, 29 November 1970, p. 32; and Barty Phillips, ‘Cut Out for Success’, The Observer, 11 June 1972, p. 24, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.

59 Anne Kennedy, interview with author, 21 November 2019.

60 The Kennedys sold the company in 1988 to Peter Bailey of Palma Group Textiles and it then continued for a short period within Freemans mail order clothing lines before being discontinued. The company has recently been revived with an updated version of its original offering of custom-printed kit garments in accord with recent hipster ‘craft revival’ initiatives. All information from current Clothkits website: https://www.clothkits.co.uk/pages/meet-the-clothkittens (accessed 27 February 2024).

61 ‘Easy’, The Observer, 13 July 1969, p. 27, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and Observer.

62 Anne Kennedy, email to author, 25 May 2023. As explained above, this was shortly before her first child was born.

63 Anne Kennedy, interview with author, 21 November 2019.

64 Anne Kennedy retains an archive of press cuttings and customer questionnaire responses. Ibid.

65 As Anne Kennedy explained, ‘Around the mid 1980s we had a more formalised Marketing team, headed by Pam Duffill, who had worked with us from the early 1970s. Firstly she was a friend, with children the same age as mine, she used to help me paint negatives for silk screens, with our babies in playpens round our feet. Then she managed a big team of outworkers, and finally became Marketing Manager’. Anne Kennedy, email to author 25 May 2023.

66 Ibid.

67 The businesses discussed in this article developed outside the structures of large-scale textile manufacturing, and their success went against the large-scale loss of production and employment in UK textiles in the same period. See Jackson, 20th Century Pattern Design, p. 167; Visick, ‘The Trouble with Textiles’.

68 Decorated bellbottoms with varying details of design could be found in all Clothkits catalogues from the first launch of the company in 1970, through to the late 1970s.

69 V. Steele, ‘Anti-fashion: The 1970s’, Fashion Theory, 1, no. 3 (1997), p. 281.

70 Barty Phillips, ‘Kitting out Kids’, The Observer, 1 August 1976, p. 18, lists Clothkits, Cosy Comfort, Clever Britches, Snippers and Tuppence Coloured, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.

71 Sally Dennis, email to author, 5 August 2017, described the establishment of Tuppence Coloured: the name ‘was suggested to us by Tom Stoppard as the kits were cut out hence — “Penny Plain or Tuppence Coloured”, from children’s toy paper theatres’.

72 Ibid.

73 Elinor et al., Women and Craft; Hadjiafxendi and Zakreski, Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century; R. Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: Women’s Press, 1984).

74 See, for example, K. Hadjiafxendi and P. Zakreski, ‘Introduction’, in Hadjiafxendi and Zakreski, eds, Crafting the Woman Professional. pp. 1–22; Boydell, ‘Free-lance Textile Design in the 1930s’; Worden and Seddon, ‘Women Designers in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s’, pp. 177–93. For design professionalisation in the post-Second World War era, see L. Armstrong, ‘Steering a Course Between Professionalisation and Commercialism’, Journal of Design History, 29, no. 2 (2015), pp. 161–79. Houze and Kowalski show how problematic gendered categories such as public/private and craft/art were to women’s status as designers, c. 1900. R. Houze, ‘At the Forefront of a Newly Emerging Profession?’, Journal of Design History, 21, no. 1 (2008), pp. 19–40; A. Kowalski, ‘The Pursuit of Art and Professionalism’, Journal of Design History, 31, no. 4 (2018), pp. 305–27. See also D. Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work, 1700 to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 214–22; Burman, ‘Introduction’, pp. 10–11.

75 Oakley, Housewife, pp. 2–3.

76 As discussed in relation to inter-war freelance women in Boydell, ‘Free-lance Textile Design in the 1930s’.

77 L. Forster, Magazine Movements: Women’s Culture, Feminisms and Media Form (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), and L. Forster and J. Hollows, eds., Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s–2000 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).

78 ‘Handbook of Homemaking A–Z’, Supplement 1 running from Accidents in the Home to Cushions, Woman’s Weekly, 12 June 1971, pp. 37–44; E. Sampson, ‘Stitchy Fingers: Simple Hints for the Non-expert Dressmaker’; the issue also featured a handkerchief hem pinafore dress to scale up (designer, Ann Caddle), allegedly ‘simpler than simplicity’. Spare Rib, ‘Housework’, no. 9, March 1973, pp. 32–34.

79 ‘Trendy for a Song’, Woman’s Realm, 19 June 1971, pp. 22–23 (with small, gridded pattern to scale up on p. 41); C. Baker, ‘Head for the Haberdashery’, Nova, February 1970, p. 41.

80 Woman’s Weekly, ‘Tale of a Tea Towel’, 7 November 1970, pp. 28–30; see also ‘Hanky Panky Presents’, Woman’s Own, 30 November 1973, pp. 20–22, which encouraged a similar reappropriation of printed handkerchiefs to create cot covers, rag books, scarves or hostess aprons.

81 ‘The Machine Age’, Woman’s Own, 21 August 1971, pp. 42–43.

82 Cheryl Buckley explains that, by contrast, in working-class households bought clothes had ‘cachet’ — and distance from manual textile work. C. Buckley, ‘On the Margins: Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home’, Journal of Design History, 11, no. 2 (1998), pp. 157–71. For a North American perspective that echoes this shift to embrace Bourdieu’s ‘art of living’ at this period, see S. Schofield-Tomschin. ‘Home Sewing: Motivational Changes in the Twentieth Century’, in Burman, The Culture of Sewing, pp. 97–110.

83 See, for example, C. Grunenberg, ed., Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era (London: Tate Publishing, 2005), pp. 11, 106; T. Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); A. Sedlmaier and S. Malinowski ‘“1968” — A Catalyst of Consumer Society’, Cultural and Social History, 8, no. 2 (2011), p. 256. For the ‘macho’ and patriarchal flavour of liberation, see Red Women’s Workshop (London: Four Corners Books, 2016), p. 7; also N. Fountain, Underground: The London Alternative Press 1966–74 (London: Comedia/Routledge, 1988), pp. 32–33.

84 See, for example, R. Poynor, ‘The Magazine as Theatre of Experiment: OZ 1967–1972’, in Design Without Boundaries: Visual Culture in Transition (London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 1998), p. 194; F. Robertson, Print Culture: From Steam Press to Ebook (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 111–15.

85 Jobling and Crowley, Graphic Design; N. Whiteley, ‘Pop, Consumerism, and the Design Shift’, Design Issues, 2, no. 2 (1985), pp. 31–45.

86 Grunenberg, Summer of Love, p. 13, claims that psychedelia asserted a ‘repressed’ aesthetic of sensory derangement intended to overturn the rationality, seriousness and the clean universalism of modernist design. See also E. Guffey, Retro: The Culture of Revival (Oxford: Reaktion Books, 2006).

87 J. D. Bolter and R. Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 19, 45; M. McLuhan and Q. Fiore, The Medium is the Massage, coordinated by Jerome Agel (London: Penguin Books, 1998 [1967]).

88 Whiteley, ‘Pop, Consumerism, and the Design Shift’, pp. 31–45.

89 A ‘Hat and Badge Kit’ first appeared in 1970 (Style 101) with eleven badges to applique. New badge ranges appeared throughout the 1970s. For a range of Tuar Fabrics items, see GSA Archives and Collections (papers and textiles of Sylvia Chalmers DC 068) at: https://gsaarchives.net/collections/sylvia-chalmers/ (accessed 28 February 2024).

90 Anonymous contributor, CM, email to author, 23 June 2020.

91 For ‘de-skilling’ debates, see Dalton, ‘Housewives, Leisure Crafts and Ideology’; and Hackney, ‘“Use Your Hands for Happiness”‘.

92 See the waistcoat and skirt detailed in n. 58 and n. 100. K. Fallan, ‘One Must Offer “Something for Everyone”: Designing Crockery for Consumer Consent in 1950s Norway’, Journal of Design History, 22, no. 2 (2009), pp. 133–49, p. 134.

93 T. Harrod, ‘“For Love and Not for Money”: Reviving “Peasant Art” in Britain 1880–1930’, The Real Thing: Essays on Making in the Modern World (London: Hyphen Press, 2015).

94 See D. T. Cook, ‘Embracing Ambiguity in the Historiography of Children’s Dress’, Textile History, 42, no. 1 (2011), pp. 7–21.

95 Knott, Amateur Craft: History and Theory; P. Atkinson, ‘Do It Yourself: Democracy and Design’, Journal of Design History, 19, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1–10. Many groups aimed to reclaim technology for consumers, for example, S. Brand, Whole Earth Catalog magazine, 1968–1972, or Boston Women’s Health Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971). On self-sufficiency, E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London: Sphere, 1974 [1973]). Schumacher’s ideas and the phrase ‘intermediate technology’ already had currency due to the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG, 1965). See also A. Smith, ‘The Alternative Technology Movement’, Human Ecology Review, 12, no. 2 (2005), pp. 106–19; J. Seymour, The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency, foreword by E. F. Schumacher (London: Corgi, 1976), with its meagre and deliberately non-modern diagrams on how to spin, dye and weave by hand, p. 227.

96 Lesley Johnson and Justine Lloyd argue that ‘Feminism has a responsibility to reassert [humane and communal values rather than self-interest] in the public world in a way that challenges the separation of home and work life’. Johnson and Lloyd, Sentenced to Everyday Life, p. 160.

97 E. Shove et al., The Design of Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2007), p. 14.

98 R. Banham, ‘Designing the Future’, Design, 241 (1969), p. 19.

99 Anne Kennedy, interview with author, 21 November 2019.

100 ‘EGO: FOR KIDS’, The Observer, 23 November 1969, p. 33, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer; ‘EGO: Observer Clothkits’, The Observer, 29 November 1970, p. 32, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer. The waistcoat, blouse and skirt in the 1970 offer at adult sizes cost 177s in total (pre-decimal UK currency, £8 17s), one-ninth of the cost of a Gina Fratini outfit. Compare these with the embroidered patchworked kaftan, c. 1969, by Thea Porter in the V&A collection, T.221-1992 http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O84321/kaftan-porter-thea/ (accessed 18 August 2016), or the wool skirt with a Liberty print, in an outfit retailing at £76 10s, Gina Fratini, London, c. 1970, also in the V&A collection, T.276-1990 http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O83996/skirt-fratini-gina/ (accessed 18 August 2016).

101 A Ladybird tricel-lined raincoat and sou’wester hat advertised in Woman’s Realm, April 1967, p. 18 was 58s 11d (just under £3). A raincoat without hat in the first Clothkits catalogue of 1970 was 40s (£2), but the dramatic cloak, hat, muff and scarf mentioned in Figure 1 was 72s 6d (£3 12s 6d). In 1977, a printed sundress from Mothercare cost £2, while a very similar style Clothkits sundress (Style 275) that still had to be sewn and fitted in 1976 cost £1.95 (this is now in decimal currency). Mothercare was founded in 1961 as a one-stop shop for maternity clothing, baby clothes and baby care products. Mothercare catalogues from 1962 and 1972 can be seen at https://www.mothercareplc.com/who-we-are/our-history.aspx (accessed 26 July 2022).

102 Anonymous contributor, MG, interview with author, 16 October 2021.

103 Anonymous contributor, LB, interview with author, 16 October 2021.

104 Anne Kennedy, email to author, 25 May 2023.

105 Anonymous contributor, CW, interview with author, 16 October 2021.

106 The ‘Womanpower’ exhibition of 1973 at Swiss Cottage Library, London, gained wide press coverage due to images such as Monica Sjoo’s God Giving Birth, 1969. Feministo (1974–) was an open-call postal art event, eventually exhibited as Portrait of the Artist as Housewife (various locations throughout 1976, culminating with a show at the ICA in June 1977. Parker and Pollock, Framing Feminism, pp. 4–6, 23–25.

107 Parker, The Subversive Stitch. For textile exhibitions in the 1970s see n. 106.

108 Parker, The Subversive Stitch, and Elinor et al., Women and Craft are canonical texts reflecting on many of these issues in the next decade.

109 Clare Hunter, a community textile artist and researcher describes amongst many other examples how the women’s campaign to close the RAF nuclear base ‘repurposed textiles to highlight the domestic world they had responsibility for’, woven into the perimeter fencing. C. Hunter, Threads of Life (London: Sceptre, 2019), p. 135.

110 Laura Ashley often gets only brief mentions in design histories, and even then may be the target for grudging attacks on female shortcomings, as in Whiteley, Pop Design, or C. Breward and G. Wood, British Design from 1948: Innovation in the Modern Age (London: V&A Publications, 2012), p. 282, where ‘Laura Ashley’ rustic fantasies are given as an explanation for why suburban women bought Range Rover people carriers.

111 For an account of state-funded art education as a consumption-oriented education in taste, see M. Romans, ‘Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Determinants in the History of Early to Mid-Century Art and Design Education in Britain’ (PhD diss., PhD University of Central England, 1998).

112 Whiteley, Pop Design, pp. 216–18.

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Frances Robertson

Frances Robertson is Lecturer and Reader in Material Cultures of Drawing at Glasgow School of Art. Her cross-disciplinary research embraces art and design theory and history, visual culture, cultural history and histories of science and technology, examining drawing as practice and discourse, as a means of shaping the three-dimensional world. Recent publications include: ‘Photography and Illustration’, in The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, vol. 3 (2020); ‘Power in the Landscape’, in The Culture of Nature in the History of Design (2019); ‘Thomas Telford’s Tour in the Highlands: Shaping the Wild Landscape through Word and Image’, in Art and Science in Word and Image: Exploration and Discovery (2019); ‘Involuntary Presence: Copying, Printing, and Multiplying Line’, TRACEY Online Journal of Contemporary Drawing Research; and Print Culture: Technologies of the Printed Page from Steam Press to eBook (2013).