Mid Century Art - Ovals Single yellow/orange/pink/red
Printed on 350gsm Fujifilm Fine Art Etch Paper and supplied unframed.
Accompanied by a document explaining the origin and history of the design.
Outer measurement 42cm x 29.7cm (w x h) - A3 Size
Image measurement 31cm x 26.5cm (w x h)
Available in A4, A3 and A1 sizes on special request. Contact us for availability and prices
Ovals Double - yellow orange pink red
Our print WA127-E-A2 is an enhanced version of the original 1976 design ESS 1624. The original ESS 1624 print is also available, reproduced at the exact scale of the original point paper.
The version extends the original ½ repeat layout to show what the complete pattern repeat would have looked like — both on the point paper and in the woven fabric itself.
The original point paper design was created in March 1976 for E&S Smith, a furnishing fabric weaver based in Bradford, UK. It was drawn by Keith Wilkinson, design technician at Bentley Walbank, a design house located in nearby Bingley. Wilkinson’s draft captured the design in its classic ½ repeat, the format typical of Jacquard weaving at the time.
For those interested in the technical side of weaving, the original point paper consisted of two sections: one for Jacquard machine 1 and one for Jacquard machine 2. Each loom was set with 400 pattern ends, and the warp was arranged in alternating end-and-end colours. The 100 weft thread cards in the design were read and hand-cut by technicians Susan and Denise, each spending about half an hour perforating their section of cards.
These punched cards were then duplicated using a quick repeater machine, and the sections were stitched together to form a continuous chain of cards — the programming that enabled the Jacquard loom to weave the full fabric pattern.
Such clever, time-saving craftsmanship took place quietly behind the scenes in the mills, where technicians and designers, using what we now call “slow tech”, created the foundation for both beautiful fabrics and unexpected works of art.
