Now I thought that I wasn't a fan of geometric design. I was wrong.
I have spent some time admiring the offerings of this pattern and it’s motifs. Looking at them with a more critical eye, though it is true I am more drawn to the curves and sweeps of a softer style. There is a lot to be said for the geometric design from the simple use of line and shape to the grandiose and intricate.
Think about cellular structure, plants, rock and geological formations, ice crystals and seashells. These beautiful natural shapes and patterns, Provide us with rich and endless elements that we can rearrange into pleasing and eye-catching motifs.
The use of geometric design is evident throughout our history and examples can be seen in Egyptian symbolism and Greek and Roman architecture.
If you just focus on the Romans for a moment. Their use of geometric design in their decoration was profound in everything from fabric to mosaic tile. The ornamental use of mosaic tile is something that the Romans were famous for, it adorned their homes, palaces, bathhouses and senate rooms. Usually with a central motif of one of their many Gods with an intricate border to underline the importance of the central figure.
And if you ask the Greeks, who invented geometry incidentally. Anything the Romans did, they basically adopted from Greek culture. If you compare the two this becomes glaringly obvious. But to my eye, the Greeks were stately and refined in their thinking (famously) and architecture. The Romans took it to that next step with embellishments and more… well more everything really.
The icons, motifs and mosaics that have been found buried all over the UK and the Surviving buildings, rooms and avenues excavated at Pompeii show the Romans to be expert in the use of fantastical geometric design.
Forward a few centuries
However it really came into its own during the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris. This is where the Art Deco period burst onto the scene. New modern ideas continued to flourish in the decades that followed and examples of the influences of Art Deco designs and motifs can still be seen in the designs of today.
As is usually the case, the creatives of art and design are closely mirrored. Both disciplines erupt forth with new forms of expression. The use of abstraction in figures, landscapes and objects, reducing them to their base geometric forms and using flat colours.
Altering perspectives were revolutionary during this early period. This great shift has become the staple of the design vocabulary and continues to be a rich seam of inspiration to pattern designers to this day.
In the bleak times that followed the second world war a fragile world needed brightness and light. This brought about a rare opportunity, in which designers were no longer encouraged to look back fondly at what went before. But to break with classical and traditional forms, to innovate and create something new and fresh.
Geometric design allows designers to scale up, scale down, deconstruct, embellish, abstract and reinterpret these beautiful ideas, into a continuing ever building framework.
Creating patterns that please the eye, filling our desire for an orderly and organised visual world.
It’s because we find geometric patterns so pleasing and because they reflect so many styles, periods and ideas that they continue to be such a rich source of inspiration.