Lucienne Day’s lesser-known silk textiles are a splendour of geometry and colour at Margaret Howell

Margaret Howell Lucienne Day with small silk mosaics at Cheyne Walk, 1997 and 98.

For the Type A personalities out there, the final months of the year are a blissful time to wipe the slate clean and get organised for the year ahead – crisp, empty planners, meeting-free diaries, and a blank calendar ready to be filled with milestones, events and holidays in anticipation for the year ahead. As with previous years, British designer Margaret Howell is characteristically more organised than most. The brand has unveiled its 2025 calendar, this year in collaboration with late, great textile designer Lucienne Day. Day's exquisite mosaic artworks frame each month in a splendour of colour and geometry. The calendar is accompanied by an exhibition dedicated to Day’s lesser-known silk mosaics spanning from 1975 to 1993.

Margaret Howell presents 'Lucienne Day's Silk Mosaics 1975-1993'

Day with ‘Aspects of the Sun’ silk mosaic, 1990 (Image credit: Copyright Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation)

The exhibition, which is at Margaret Howell's flagship on Wigmore Street in London, is the first comprehensive showcase of Day’s 'Silk Mosaics' since the pioneering post-war designer's death in 2010. Day, whose legacy transcends time and trends, embraced colour in her work, and was inspired by the Bauhaus and modern art movements, working across mediums spanning textiles, wallpapers, ceramics, table linens and carpets.

Lucienne Day’s work features on the Margaret Howell 2025 calendar (Image credit: Courtesy of Margaret Howell)

Day's works in silk have a special quality of their own. From large-scale pieces to daintier samples, the exhibition is a chance to view the kaleidoscope of works up close, whereby the detail of craft and colour can be fully appreciated.

Lucienne Day with ‘Midnight Sun’ (Image credit: Copyright Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation)

The compositions are arresting – mesmerising in their intricacy and yet soothingly atmospheric. The exhibition contains around 200 of Day's textile pieces crafted over the course of two decades, from the late 1970s until the end of the 1990s. Some pieces nod to her emerging work of the 1950s, playing with geometry, featuring blocks of colour and a more linear structure. Others reference a more pared-back, architectural style, reminiscent of Day's later work in the 1960s.

‘The Castle and Other Stories’ at Day's home, which she shared with husband and fellow designer Robin Day (Image credit: Copyright Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation)

As such, 'Silk Mosaics' presents a compelling lens through which to view the gentle evolution of Day's design language. Against the backdrop of Frieze London 2024, with all its noise and bombast, this is a welcome retreat, and Margaret Howell, the flagbearer for British modernist values in clothing as in life, is the perfect host.

A selection of the Silk Mosaics will form the content of the Margaret Howell Calendar 2025. 'Lucienne Day's Silk Mosaics 1975-1993' runs from 11 October until 3 November at Margaret Howell, 34 Wigmore Street, London W1 margarethowell.co.uk

‘Midnight Sun’ by Lucienne Day on the Margaret Howell calendar (Image credit: Courtesy of the artist and Margaret Howell)