Silk with Embroidered Flowers c. 1941

This is a design for silk with embroidered flowers made by Douglas Campbell. It’s hard to date, but he lived a long life, dying in 1995. I’m curious about the choice of a yellow ground, almost like a mustard colour, against which the embroidered flowers are placed. The colours are muted, not too bright, giving it a kind of faded elegance. It’s a lovely tension between something structured and something organic, the way the vertical lines of the silk meet the free-flowing shapes of the floral arrangements. There’s a real process here, the way you can almost see the artist working through the composition, arranging and rearranging the elements to find the right balance. Look at the bottom of the design, the way Campbell has included a scalloped edge like pinking shears were about to go to town! This piece reminds me of the work of textile designers like William Morris, but with a kind of homemade quality. It's like Campbell is inviting us to imagine a world where art and craft are seamlessly intertwined. For me, art is often about this kind of exchange, where ideas are passed down and reinterpreted across generations.