Part 4 Project 1 Stage 3a

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/

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

 (http://www.vads.ac.uk/)

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/