The new... collaboration
Textile artist Margo Selby’s latest designs for Osborne & Little are joyously upbeat
When Peter Osborne saw Margo Selby’s ‘Vexillum’ series, he knew the time was right for their third collaboration. The co-founder of premium fabric and wallpaper brand Osborne & Little was among the visitors stunned by Selby’s dizzyingly complex large-scale artworks on show at the Collect contemporary craft and design fair in 2020. Each is a geometric constellation of stripes handwoven by the artist in 9,000-strand sections.
Known for her precise weaving, intuitive use of colour and modernist influences, Selby pushes bold concepts in her artwork that can also be applied in the design of furnishing fabrics. Following her last collections with Osborne & Little, ‘Ragtime’ (2016) and ‘Memphis’ (2019), ‘Jive’ comprises six new musically inspired fabrics that layer stripes, colour and pattern in surprising and offbeat ways.
‘There’s a natural relationship between music and weaving,’ explains Selby. ‘A mathematics behind both that’s to do with numbers and beats, light and dark, juxtaposing patterns and playing with scale.’ While jazz and blues were references for previous Osborne & Little ranges (the brand itself was born in Swinging 1960s London), the earlier jive scene has lent its name to this collection, inspiring designs with new depth, energy and structural complexity.
Among the six lively fabrics being released, ‘Mambo’ has rhythmic stepped patterns with the look of an optical illusion, while ‘Carioca’ is derived from Selby’s creative process. The artist starts all her fabrics by wrapping a small piece of card or wood in yarn, bringing colours forward and back to explore ‘how the horizontal and the vertical might interact’.
Selby says the three collections for Osborne & Little are distinct, but have a unity that comes from their handwoven starting points. From there, ‘it’s about exploring new colour palettes, shapes and weaving techniques, always trying to push forwards and create better textiles than we’ve made before.’ From £75 per metre (osborneandlittle.com).