'Queen of the tea towel'

'You can more or less put anything on fabric,' Textile designer Pat Albeck (as seen on previous Selvedge pages) is the latest guest to be castaway by Kirsty Young on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Having designed between 300-350 tea towels for the National Trust, there is no doubt that Albeck has influenced the way we see and what we expect from domestic textiles - she was one of the first people to put pattern and bedlinen together. Constantly and possibly compulsively, drawing and working, her lifetime's body of work is having an almost renaissance moment, with her work from the 1950s and 1960s today being seen and valued under the 'retro' category, John Lewis reissued her Daisy Chain print for their 150th anniversary last year. However, at the heart of Albeck's work is serious discipline, skilled drawing and a firm grasp on design from post war Britain to present day. Listen to Pat Albeck's Desert Island Discs here: www.bbc.co.uk www.pat-albeck.co.uk