Last Chance: Double Weave: Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles

Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft mark ten years since our major redevelopment with an exhibition about the museum’s co-founder Hilary Bourne (1909 – 2004) and Barbara Allen (1903 – 1972), her partner in life and work.

Image: Double Weave: Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles, installation view, Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, 2023. Photo: Tessa Hallmann.

The pair ran an internationally successful textile studio, designing and making a variety of fabrics – tweed for Fortnum & Mason, furnishing fabric for Heal’s and scarves for Liberty. The turning point in their career came in 1951, when they won the competition to design and make textiles for the newly built Festival Hall. They went on to win commissions to make the costumes for the multi-Oscar winning 1959 film Ben-Hur and the interiors of the UK’s first jet planes.

In short, they were two of the most significant textile designers of the modernist period, yet they remain largely unknown – until now.

Image: Double Weave: Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles, installation view, Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, 2023. Photo: Tessa Hallmann.

Double Weave gives space to their story. It speaks to the invisibility of women as leading modernist designers and how women’s intimacy informs creative pursuits.

High profile commissions undertaken by the pair are on display, such as the costumes from Ben-Hur and curtains designed for the Ceremonial Box at the Royal Festival Hall. Visitors can see Bourne and Allen’s innovative use of natural dyes for hand woven textiles, as well as examples of their early adoption of the metallic yarn, Lurex.

Image: Double Weave: Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles, installation view, Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, 2023. Photo: Tessa Hallmann.

Curator, cultural producer and academic E-J Scott is spearheading the project. In a style reflective of the vast and vibrant women’s networks of the time, E-J has assembled a collective of the country’s most inspiring fashion and textile historians to co-curate the show: Jane Hattrick (dress historian), Shelley Tobin (textile curator and dress historian), Veronica Issac (course leader MA Fashion Curation at UAL), Jane Traies (women’s historian) and Suzanne Rowland (costume historian).

Double Weave: Bourne and Allen’s Modernist Textiles is on show at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft until 14 April 2024.