This lovely vintage 1970s design in red, white and blue is now available as a beautiful original canvas print, in sizes 8″ and 10″ square. Assembled by hand in our studio, ‘Pageant‘ is printed with long-lasting Epson HD pigment inks on 100% cotton canvas, sealed with matte varnish, over a sturdy pine wood stretcher.
This design was originally created as part of a collection of textile samples in the 1970s. As well as the red, white and blue colourway, an alternative colour scheme was produced at the same time, using only two colours: Burnt Sienna and an earthy ochre tone. This colourway, ‘Sandcastle‘ – which we featured just recently for #sandcastleday – was designed to be printed on a heavier, more textured fabric.
The complicated motifs for these patterns are based on the shapes of chess pieces, and were arranged using a layout pad in the days before computers! Fabric designing was a much more time-consuming process in the 1970s, with each individual croquis sketch having to be traced and painted by hand as perfectly as possible. The repeat of each pattern had to be included on the croquis as well, showing how it would extend across the fabric.
The original artwork of our print ‘Sandcastle’ took the design of ‘Pageant’ a bit further because it is actually a silk-screen print on textured paper, which would have shown a potential buyer how the finished fabric might look.
‘Pageant’, with its bright red, white and blue colour scheme, makes a lovely greeting card design for birthdays and celebrations of all kinds, as well as an eye-catching print or poster. Enjoy this piece of textile design history, reproduced on matte papers to give the exact quality of the original hand-painted design, or as one of our new original canvas prints!