Stripe me pink!

sold to a Californian dec. shop!

What a bundle of joy!

I have always loved stripes, both for wearing, and decorating my rooms,  and my portrait here shows me in a red/white stripey shirt in fine cotton poplin, with a pie-crust collar, that I bought on a visit to Rowlands of Bath 50 years ago and which I  wore regularly for 30 years.    Do you remember, Princess Diana had one like that?   So it was not surprising that when I discovered tickings in France at a feather factory in Tours, I was totally smitten with the brilliant combinations of stripes, especially those that were imported covering feather beds from Germany, where the palette was bold and beautiful.  I have recounted elsewhere how I discovered them in huge dirty piles tied in twenties in their original grubby, smelly, state, stacked high in the loft of an old factory warehouse and how I brought them home by the hundred, and after heavy and thorough cleansing, then sold them to eager buyers from all over the world, after a mention of the huge variety of colourways by W.o.I. Mag.  and a picture of a  little trug of samples in their Antennae column.  I have kept an archive of 145 different patterns, as there is no literature or record of the patterns that I have ever been able to source  and - I think they were considered too lowly, too domestic and possibly too varied to be worthy of proper documentation.  I always felt that each factory must have concocted its own mix of different stripes according to the coloured cotton thread available and just got on with production while it lasted and no celebrity, decorator or stylist was involved in the choice of pattern.
  A friend, Jenny Garrett Smith, has a super stock of some of these tickings and will be offering them at the Rag Market here in Bradford on Avon on Sunday, June 15th, 2014, 9am - 43 pm. so this could be a last chance!