In the decades following the Second World War, Britain witnessed a remarkable reawakening of creativity across art, design, and architecture. Among the most dynamic areas of this post-war renaissance was textile art — a medium that, as reflected in Modern Made collections and exhibitions, bridged the boundaries between craft, design, and fine art.
contemporary craft
Modern Threads: Post-War British Textile Art
23 October 2025
Philip Smith
In the aftermath of the Second World War, British textile art entered a period of radical redefinition. The urgent reconstruction of cultural life encouraged artists and designers to explore weaving, stitch and fibre not as decorative sidelines, but as mediums of innovation equal to painting and sculpture.
Figures such as Jacqueline Groag and Lucienne Day, who helped reshape British interiors in the 1940s and 50s with bold modernist patterns, laid the groundwork for this expanded vision of textiles — demonstrating their potential to transform not only the look of the post-war home but also the language of modern design itself.
Building on these foundations, a new generation of artists sought to test the expressive and structural limits of the medium. Tadek Beutlich, whose unorthodox off-loom techniques produced strikingly sculptural forms, exemplified this shift towards fibre as an arena of radical experimentation. Alongside him, Theo Moorman, Peter Collingwood, Bobbie Cox and Audrey Walker each forged distinctive voices: Moorman’s painterly inlaid threads redefined woven imagery; Collingwood’s macro-gauzes revealed an architectural vision of textile structure; Cox’s subtle orchestrations of colour and texture reflected a deeply tactile sensibility; and Walker’s embroideries — often described as “drawings in thread” — fused line and fibre with lyrical delicacy.
Together, these artists asserted textiles as a medium of conceptual and visual power, helping position Britain as a centre of innovation within the art-textile movement of the 1960s and 70s. Their textiles capture both the spirit of post-war innovation and the ease with which the medium moves between craft, design, and art.
