Designing the Centenary Chaise - Salford 100 years anniversary - pt2
Where the heck do I start…!
Rabbit in headlight moment! Lots of ideas, inspiration, search spirals, overwhelm and designers block…
How I designed the Centenary Chaise for the Salford 100 year anniversary..
Read on to find out more…
I went too wide!
With a simple yet flexible brief to connect to Salford Museum & Art Gallery, ideally from an Archive piece meant the ideas went flowing… from creating fabrics, weaving, adding prints and objects to reflect the areas history.
But it was too wide, too many options and directions that didn’t hold together. Although I wanted some level of abstract design, incorporating all of these ‘mind map’ ideas wasn’t working. Connecting to an archive piece alone was then too narrow.
The Ah-ha moment
Since we’ve been based at Islington Mill, the proximity of Peel Park that sits behind the Museum has been a real tonic for morning walks with my Dog Archie. Time before the day-day and stresses of running your own business - it was really valued and still is!
Built for the people of Salford and Manchester in 1846 it went beyond the 100 years scope of this project, although there was a significant upgrade in 2017, and has a significant place for Salford today. Read more on Wiki here
I’d always seen the cross/key symbol dotted around from posts, bins, entrance way artwork and replicated in the planting that can be seen from the Museum.
This was it…I decided this would be an anchor to the design.
An interactive art piece
I knew from the off that I wanted to have a piece that would be interactive, something for people to perch on, experience and have a moment whilst visiting the exhibition. Not only to reflect the upholstery side of things, but also the connect back to the park, the benches that make you pause.
I looked into the key shape and realised that by turning it 90 degrees would lend itself to the side on shape of a Chaise Longue. Taking this outline and plotting over the curves to help make it more ergonomic formed the basis for the Centenary Chaise. To emphasise the four rounds of the key/cross I decided to keep this as a distinct section which would be upholstered separately.
Now I just needed to design the fabric..
The fabric design..
From visiting the Museum Archives, browsing the historic library, researching online, visiting the Manchester Contemporary, doodling ideas and viewing historic buildings - again I faced a huge amount of content. STOP!! I had to frame this again and soon took the learnings from before to realise it would work best to utilise the Key/Cross symbol - this time breaking this into component parts that would house the images, symbols and images.
With the 100 years spanning across key styles and genres I further framed the design into art deco, 60’s/70’s and 80’s styles that would sit within the fragmented key shape. Using scans, shapes and symbols this formed the component parts of the design. With mutliple versions of each this created the basis for the main pattern. With others providing infills to the pattern process.
Bold and bright colours on a dark background gave rise to an overall 60/70’s style with some gothic hints from the cross symbol.
Look closely and you’ll see street maps in the art deco style; the S from the street signs made into a 60’s style, Islington Mill, Textile factory bobbins with an 80’s overlay. Street layouts and Waterways played in and around the shapes as well as directory listings showing Mill and Upholstery workers in the area during that time.
Printed onto eco synthetic fabric. Upholstered by Loose Button Upholstery (of course!)
I hope you like it!!
You can view this and other work from individual artists and collectives until September 2026 - see https://salfordmuseum.com/event/ys100-narratives/ and also a public selected https://salfordmuseum.com/event/your-salford-100/
With thanks to Ryan for helping to prepare the chaise for me!
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