Mandalay: The Old Bleach Fish that Swam Off an Irish Loom

A shoal of fish moves across pale blue linen, caught mid-turn, scattering bubbles as it goes. This is Mandalay, the pattern gracing the subscriber wrapper of Selvedge Issue 131, Flow, and it was designed around 1935 by a young Northern Irish designer named Felix Corry Gotto for the Old Bleach Linen Company. Reversible and woven, the fabric captures a moment when a century-old linen firm decided to gamble everything on contemporary design.

Archival Old Bleach Linen Company promotional postcard. Image: Irishman Lost.

Old Bleach, established by Charles James Webb, had been producing linen in Randalstown since 1864, built on the kind of household staples that keep a mill running: tablecloths, towels, embroidered goods in patterns so traditional they barely changed from decade to decade. Its name came from its production method. Rather than bleaching cloth with chemicals, workers laid the woven linen out across the fields and let sun and rain do the work over weeks, a process as slow as it was reliable.

Miniature linen towel embroidered in red thread with crowned GRI monogram. Made for Queen Mary's Dolls' House, 1924. Image: Royal Collection Trust.

By 1925, that reputation had reached the society pages. On 28 January 1925, The Tatler devoted a full page to the firm's contribution to Queen Mary's dolls' house, writing: "The beauty of Old Bleach is in the fabric itself. It is woven from pure Irish flax and bleached by the old tried ways of sun and grass. That is why its lovely lustre survives laundering after laundering."

Zodiac, Furnishing fabric, designed by Marion Dorn, ca. 1939. V&A Collections.

Everything shifted in 1932, when the firm began commissioning furnishing fabrics from leading artists of the day. Marion Dorn, Paul Nash, Ashley Havinden and Gotto himself brought bold botanical prints, sweeping abstract curves and confident geometrics to linen that had previously been the preserve of anonymous in-house designers. Old Bleach was also among the first British firms to adopt screen printing for some of its fabrics, a technique that suited looser, more painterly designs elsewhere in the collection, even as pieces like Mandalay relied on the loom itself to carry the pattern.

Persian Rose, Furnishing fabric, manufactured by Old Bleach Linen Company Limited, 1936. V&A Collections.

The gamble paid off. Old Bleach fabrics turned up on the Cunard liners, and eventually furnishing royal palaces. Havinden, doubling as art director at the London agency W.S. Crawford, helped orchestrate glamorous fabric parties in London and Glasgow, drawing what one design historian called a dazzling roll call of visitors into the firm's orbit.

Furnishing fabric, designed by Felix C. Gotto, ca. 1939. V&A Collections

Gotto himself trained at the Slade under Randolph Schwabe before returning to Northern Ireland, where he designed some of Old Bleach's most striking patterns while sailing competitively on Strangford Lough in his spare time. He later settled in Suffolk, painting landscapes around the River Orwell until his death in 1994.

Textile print design for Old Bleach Co., Lily Goddard, 1968-9. V&A Collections.

The mill closed around 1980, its buildings demolished by 1994. What survives, in collections like the V&A's, are patterns like Mandalay: proof that a firm rooted in tradition could still take real creative risks when it mattered.

. . .

Further information:

As a subscriber of Selvedge, your magazine is delivered inside a printed wrapper. Mandalay features on the wrapper for Selvedge issue 131, Flow. 

Further examples of Old Bleach Company fabrics can be found within the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, many of which can be viewed on request.

. . .

Image Credits:

Lead: Mandalay, by Felix Corry Gotto for the Old Bleach Linen Co. Ltd., 1935.

All further images as credited in captions.