Redrafting Domestic Life: Women Textile Designers and New Professional Enterprises in Early 1970s Britain

Abstract

This article considers screen printed home sewing kits and domestic items in Britain in the early 1970s, focusing on women designers and their customers negotiating the demands of domestic and working life. The ambiguous status of domestic labour, particularly in relation to clothing and textiles, means this topic is under-researched, even though in this case it coincides with second-wave feminism and attacks on the normalisation of gendered practices. As print initiatives, these businesses can also be evaluated against ‘counter-cultural’ graphic design of the period, showing a similar transition from modern and Pop influences in the late 1960s to folkloric and historical styles. In establishing self-contained business enterprises within family contexts, we see new working lives created by female designers.