Lucienne Day: Living design
- Submitting institution
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Arts University Bournemouth, the
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Hunt_32061 Lucienne
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- TheGallery, Arts University Bournemouth
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- January
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- In 2016 Hunt was commissioned by the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation to co-curate an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Lucienne Day’s birth. The research programme had several aims: to fulfil the Foundation’s objectives of generating knowledge, to promote understanding of the design legacies of Day, and to further public and scholarly access to Day’s design.
The exhibition was an investigation into new ways of showing historical textile designs as a means of understanding if a balance between historical authenticity and contemporary knowledge of the design process could be found.
The originality of the research was inspired by a theme already initiated by Day herself to give permission to companies, such as Classic Designs and John Lewis, to reissue digitally printed fabrics under license. Hunt undertook archival research and conducted a series of interviews with Day’s daughter, alongside well-known design historians including Christopher Frayling and Jennifer Harris to support and deepen the research. The exhibition explored how audiences responded to seeing historical textile designs re-created using digital fabric printing under licence by the designer. It found that audiences reacted to the design integrity rather than the fabric manufacturing process, determining that designs have a different legacy beyond the original purpose.
The exhibition offered new insights into Day’s work following previous non-touring shows (Lucienne Day: A Career in Design, Whitworth Art Gallery 1993 and ‘Pioneers of Contemporary Design’, Barbican, 2001) now over 20 years old. One of the major outcomes of the exhibition was the opportunity it afforded to re-examine the design legacy of a British pioneering woman designer. Accompanied by an illustrated book with research articles by Hunt and Paula Day, the exhibition toured to eight venues between 2017-20, with overall visitor numbers exceeding 47,000 and over 45 associated events, talks, and workshops.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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