British Printed Textiles of the 1970s: A Material Culture Study

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. December 2016. Major: Design. Advisor: Barbara Martinson. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 247 pages.The purpose of this material culture study is to explore how social and cultural changes in Britain are expressed through British printed textiles of the 1970s. To facilitate this exploration, two research questions were developed. The first draws attention to the textiles’ surface design: What is the nature of iconography featured in British printed textiles of the 1970s? The second reiterates the purpose statement, the goal being to understand how these textiles reflected the changing values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions of 1970s Britain. This paper addresses the different ways different groups of people (e.g., designers, manufacturers, consumers, cultural commentators) viewed British printed textiles in the 1970s. This insight into the beliefs, values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions regarding these textiles contributes to the study of textiles by (a) placing 1970s British printed textiles in historical, social, and cultural context; (b) adding to the information about 1970s textile iconography; and (c) positioning textiles in a broader theoretical dialogue. Textile design in the 1970s is often dismissed as a dark period in the otherwise bright history of modernism. Findings reveal a thematic and stylistic diversity in textile design, symbolic of the spirit of the “Schizophrenic Seventies.” This zeitgeist was manifested as a cultural ambivalence regarding modernity, technology, and progress expressed in terms of revivalist, escapist, ethnic, and nostalgic textile designs or hybrids thereof. In hindsight, both the zeitgeist and the designs might be termed postmodern: a conscious break from the modernism of the 1960s