Out of the Blue – Tricia Guild and Amanda Back

Fifty Years of Designers Guild – Tricia Guild and Amanda Back

Description:
Out of the Blue unravels Tricia Guild’s unique and creative approach, focusing in on her inspiration, her intuitive design methodology and the techniques, processes and materials used. Frustrated with the lack of truly contemporary fabrics and wallpapers for interiors, Tricia’s vision was to create a lifestyle. Tricia showed people how to put the different elements of a room together; how colour, pattern, texture and form can combine to create a harmonious space.

Juxtapositions are key to Tricia Guild’s style. Like an artist employing collage, her judgment of each composition has led to hugely diverse results. However, what has remained consistent is the boldness with which she brings together patterns, colours and materials to striking effect. She has consistently remained true to this vision and her initial philosophy is still paramount to the company’s work today.

Readers will be able to see where Tricia’s inspiration comes from – her travels to India, Japan and Scandinavia – and how this is translated into collections of fabrics, wallpaper, furniture and accessories. Her inspiration may come from ancient Indian textiles, Renaissance-style velvet or a Swedish Gustavian wall treatment, but the resulting interiors are never drawn solely from one traveller’s tale and are never just a reworking of an old document. Instead, each is an eclectic amalgam in which a harmony exists between East and West, present and past.

Designers Guild is perhaps known best for florals and botanicals, but plain fabrics in a multitude of shades and textures, alongside a vast range of geometric and abstract designs, are also vital to the mix. Tricia is renowned for her confident and vivid use of colour, but the natural and neutral palette enjoys equal prominence in the company’s collections. Founded by Tricia Guild OBE, Designers Guild started life in 1970 as a small section of a single shop in Chelsea’s King’s Road. The brand has since evolved and grown into a global enterprise, whose products have changed the way we view colour, pattern and texture in our homes.

https://www.accartbooks.com/uk/store/pv/9781788840743/out-of-the-blue/tricia-guild-and-amanda-back/

Review
Out of the Blue is an absolutely sumptuous book, full of rich colour and a glorious sourcebook of designs and palettes to inspire any home owner, or interior designer. Celebrating fifty years of creativity from Tricia Guild and The Designers Guild, this book also accompanies an exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum, Bermondsey which opened in February 2020.

In her inspiration, Tricia Guild describes how some of her earliest memories were of the colours in her grandparents garden, ‘looking up through the lilac flowers of their wisteria, the sharp acidic green of the first leaves, to an endless blue sky, and being genuinely touched by its beauty I have always felt a very strong connection with nature and remain as inspired by the landscape and what I see now, as I was then.’

This was coupled with inspiration from her parents who were artistic and forward-thinking and throughout her career she has assembled a team of people who strive for excellence at all levels. Tricia remains involved in every aspect of the work of the Designers Guild, from the direction of each season’s collections of fabric and wallpaper, of each thread colour, of printing and weaving techniques, and all of the products including the furniture, paint, bedlinen, rugs and home accessories.

It is this attention to detail that shines through in every aspect of her work, and the books that she creates are full of such visual mastery and inspiration and Out of the Blue is such a special collection and as one of the quotes in the book states:

‘Few people can claim to have shaped the taste of a nation, but Tricia Guild is one of them’ Robert Johnson, 1996

Out of the Blue – Fifty Years of Designers Guild – Tricia Guild and Amanda Back with special photography by James Merrell is published by ACC Art Books

https://www.accartbooks.com/uk/

DIARY NOTE

An exhibition about Designers Guild – Out of the Blue: Fifty Years of Designers Guild is at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum – Exhibition Dates: 14 February – 14 June 2020, details can be found at the following link https://www.ftmlondon.org/ftm-exhibitions/out-of-the-blue-50-years-of-designers-guild/