October 2008

Explore the Apollo archive

Look back over two vibrant years of Apollo: browse every issue from January 2006 to the present day.

There is still time to catch a small but fascinating exhibition at the Wellcome Collection – ‘From Atoms to Patterns’ runs until 10 August and tells the story of ‘Crystal structure designs from the 1951 Festival of Britain’. I’ll admit that it’s a highly specific-sounding title, but will make a curious trip down memory lane for anyone who can remember their parents’ or grandparents’ home furnishings, or those they aspired to, at least.

The focus of the show is the scientific breakthroughs of the 1950s and their use in domestic design. I had always assumed that ’50s dresses had what now appear rather quaint, space-agey whizzing atom patterns on them and that furniture resembled the ball-and-spoke shapes of DNA models simply because designers had somehow absorbed the visual language of the new discoveries in physics and chemistry, but the relationship was in fact a much more direct one.

Leading Cambridge scientist in crystallography (looking at the structure of molecules), Helen Megaw, wrote the following to the Industrial Design Council: ‘I should like to ask designers of wallpaper and fabrics to look at the patterns made available by x-ray crystallography, I am constantly being impressed by the beauty of the designs which crop up… I think the combination of really attractive pattern with the assurance of scientific accuracy would win a lot of attention.’

The council responded favourably and the Festival Pattern Group was created. The result was the production of fabrics and furniture, for display at the 1951 Festival of Britain with bizarre and delightful titles like ‘resorcinol carpets’, ‘afwillite curtains’, ‘haemoglobin laminates’ and ‘pentaerythritol ashtrays’. Although the collaboration did not lead to a whole new school or movement in design in itself, the decorative aesthetic of the Festival Pattern Group is unmistakeably 1950s and similar patterns were reproduced worldwide.

What I admire most, however, is that the exhibition will appeal to such a curious cross-section of enthusiasts ranging from students and researchers of science, and historians of post-war Britain, those with an interest in design and – the group I suppose I belong to – vintage fashion fans.

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