Patterns to STEAL from

Normally on Fridays I punt on the blog by sharing Fun Friday Resources, places you can STEAL FROM THE BEST, but for some reason the intertubes have not been forthcoming with fun/interesting websites. Today, therefore, I have just one item.

First, have a look:

What’s your guess? Helen Frankenthaler in a giddy mood? Bedsheets from the 1970s? Hilda af Klint before she decided to color within the lines?

Nope: a silk fabric sample from 1895–1900! Our friends over at the Public Domain Review have the goods on this fabric swatch book from the period, and I have to say that I found the samples to be astonishing in their boldness. These are not the patterns I associate with the Edwardian era (recognizing that my perceptions of the period are heavily influenced by British miniseries) — I’d love to know more about the AUDIENCE for these samples. Were they Bohemians or otherwise avant garde? Is this fabric for gowns? Waistcoats? Drapery? Upholstery? So many questions!

(Sidebar: If you support Public Domain Review monetarily, you receive a packet of postcards from their collection, twice a year. I just got mine yesterday, and they’re fabulous!)

No matter what Parisians were doing with this stuff at the turn of the last century, you and I can certainly rifle through the collection to find ideas that interest/excite us and then STEAL FROM THE BEST. For example, the above image would make a killer book cover design, right?

You see the possibilities.

You also begin to wonder: If this was going on in Paris in 1895, what took Kandinsky so long to catch up?