Textile Design from Sketchbook 1

During the Second World War, when materials were scarce and opportunities rare, Moore found it impossible to execute major sculptural projects. When a Luftwaffe bomb damaged his Hampstead studio in 1940, he was compelled to focus his creativity on drawing and it was during these stressful wartime years that he executed his most exceptional drawings.

Zika Ascher approached Moore in late 1942 or early 1943 with the novel plan to work with the artist on creating modern textiles that would combine the worlds of fine art and fashion and bring the modernist ideals of the European avant-garde into peoples everyday lives. Moore was intrigued by the social nature of the idea and began to think of motifs outside of those that were purely sculptural and figural for these works. Starting in 1943, Moore filled four notebooks with his ideas for the textile designs.

In stark contrast to the Shelter Drawings that Moore depicted from 1940-42, a year prior to these drawings, Moore's textile designs reflect the rising optimism in Britain and the desire to create works that would enliven a society made dreary by wartime rationing, death, and hardship. The varied subject matter depicted gives insight into the overall development of Moore's oeuvre, subjects for which he is widely known such as the reclining figure and the family group feature, as well as more subtle influences depicted. Anita Feldman, Curator at The Henry Moore Foundation writes: 'these compositions reveal many illuminating aspects of his work, with links to his interest in non-Western art, organic form and, perhaps surprisingly, industrial materials and vivid colour ... Many of the subjects depicted in Moore's textile designs are unusually whimsical, from imaginative sea creatures to twisting caterpillars, insect wings, piano keys and even rows of teepees' (A. Feldman (ed.), Henry Moore Textiles, Hertfordshire, 2008, p. 27).