An analytical study of Three Daughters of Mexico by Lucienne
Day
Title: Three Daughters of Mexico
Artist: Lucienne Day
Collection: Royal College of Art Collection
ID Number: RCA_CC1077
Measurements: 1450 x 1880mm
Date: 1995
Medium: Silk mosaic textile
Source: http://www.vads.ac.uk/
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| Three Daughters of Mexicohttp://www.vads.ac.uk/ |
Silk Mosaics came about almost by accident. As her work for the mass market was coming to
an end Lucienne Day was commissioned to decorate some metal fire shutters for
the John Lewis department store in Newcastle and there were comments about how
like embroidery the design looked. Day
took the idea and developed it and Three Daughters of Mexico was completed in
1995 twenty years after the first mosaic.
It almost seems as if the work is a drawing together of lots that went
previously. I can see elements of
Graphica and Day’s early love of geometrical shapes for instance. There is a confidence to the work.
In this piece there are three abstract panels and the same angular
shapes appear in each one but with a slightly different twist. If the panels were pushed together the lines
would often be continuous. They have a clear relationship to each other. The
colours are similar in each panel although the shade might be slightly
different and there is a mixture of warm and cold colours.
All of Day’s mosaics were made by taking tiny pieces of silk
(some as small as 1cm) and stitching them together in a long strip. Eventually
the long strips were joined to each other following a pattern. Various types of silk were used and often
combined to give a shimmering effect.
Showing the silk
strips used in Three Daughters of Mexico
Sometimes they used shot silk where the weft and the warp
were different colours. The effect is
one of changing colours as the angle of the fabric and the light varies.
Day developed what she termed Silk Mosaics because the small
pieces of fabric were reminiscent of the small fragments of tile used in Roman
mosaics. She was anxious to dissociate
from the technique of patchwork. In
reality there were important differences between patchwork and silk
mosaics. The pieces of fabric used were
much smaller and were always plain coloured silk. Unlike patchwork the templates were not
removed. Because the design was
conceived based on an established technique I believe this is a materials led
piece of work.
Initially Day did the design and stitching entirely herself
but by the time this piece was made she had assistants one being Karin Conradi,
her niece.
“In the Spirit of the Age” (Casey, 2014) has a short piece by
Karin Conradi where she tells of working with her aunt. She describes in fascinating detail how the
fabrics were sourced, cut and then stitched (p232).
We used any type of silk we could get
– Thai, habuti etc. The texture was not the most important thing (in most
cases); it was the colour, the vibrancy, the character of the silk that
mattered. (Casey, 2014)
Unlike the work Day did in the 50’s which was intended to
bring good design to the average person, silk mosaics were all one offs and
purely aesthetic works of art. This made
the works very expensive and consequently they were often commissioned by
institutions and businesses.
It has been difficult to find information specific to Three
Daughters of Mexico. I have been unable
to discover what the inspiration for the piece was. Although it is clearly influenced by Mexican
textiles I have been unable to verify this.
It is the same story with the commissioning of the piece. I contacted the Robin and Lucienne Day
Foundation and I quote the reply from Debbie Hylton PA to Paula Day in full:
I forwarded your enquiry to Paula Day and her response is:
'Three Daughters of Mexico' is reproduced in both Lesley Jackson's and Andrew Casey's books, but neither give very much information. All I can tell Irene is that my mother gave it to the Royal College of Art as a gift, and it was installed in the Senior Common Room in 2006.
But it was designed and made (according to Lesley Jackson) in 1992-3. Though some of her silk mosaics were designed to commission, most were not. Clearly she must have thought highly of this one as she eventually chose to donate it to the RCA. She did visit Mexico (and collected many art and craft items) in the early 1960s. But, other than vivid colour, I don't see any specific influences.
I'm grateful for the extra information although it throws the date into some doubt.
Casey, A. (2014). In the Spirit of the Age.
Suffolk: Antique Collectors Club.
http://www.vads.ac.uk/. (n.d.).
http://www.robinandluciennedayfoundation.org/
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