It's News if It's Printed

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 24009, 5 July 1941, Page 18

It's News if It's Printed

Famous Artists Devise Textile Designs

Y\ r ITH che flimirution of Paris and VnoiHt aa export centres,. Manchester is launching. a great r*mp#ign. 006 only to ma lie the world cnttonconseious, but- also to show what it can do m the matter of creative skill, {"harming and original design and beautiful fahries. Fashion and commercial artist's combined with the usual textile designers to supply only about half the designs shown at the Cotton Board's recent areafc exhibition at Manchester, The other half of the designs was the work of famous up-andkoraing artists who have already achieved _ a name for themselves in more lofty spheres-—landscape painters, woodengravers. water-colourists, book illustrators, designers for stage, film and ballet work, and so on.

Among the famous names associated with this enterprise are those of the brilliant sisters, Doris and Anna Ziukeisen, Nadia Benois, well known for her ballet designs, and Vanessa Bell, famous artist and book illustrator and'a sister of the late Virginia Woo if. Men such as John Furletgh. Ivor Hitchens, Duncan Grant and Alan Gwynne Jones likewise co-operated. The exhibition was followed by a_ designers' conference, when they decided that each one ahottld choose one new design These 'special prints will _be made into Lancashire fabricsthe finished fabrics into gowns which will

form the nucleus of vet another export collection to the L'nited States and Canada.. Norm an Hartnell, Peter Russell, Mme. Mosea, of Paquin. Mme. Elspeth Champcommixual, of Worth, and Digby Morton were among the lirrst designers to choose their prints, Whert the collection arrives in New York everyone concerned in the launching of the gown —from the artist who designed the print to the couturier who designed the finished gown—will be credited.