Magyar News, 2006. január-május (17. évfolyam, 1-5. szám)
2006-05-01 / 5. szám
wall-hangings, and a panel design for curtains or for framed display was printed on cloth hand-woven at Clifford Mill. This featured scenes from Shakespeare's plays: Coriolanus greeting Volumnia, Hamlet musing over Yorick's skull, Romeo duelling with Tybalt, and wooing Juliet on her balcony, and Malvolio displaying his stockings to Olivia. These are depicted against a background of theatrical architecture from Italy and Britain. The fabric was commissioned for the 1964 anniversary celebrations and a Ienght was later hung on the landing of the Shakespeare Centre, adjacent to the Conference Room. Tibor's fabric designs continued to develop in new directions in response to commissions for the Cunard liner, QE2, and for Concorde airliner, which shared 1969 for their maiden voyage and first trial flights. Lotus cars used his fabrics, as did G-Plan and Ercol furniture. The 1970s were devoted primarily to fabrics for schools, hospitals and colleges, and in 1973 Tibor was awarded the Textile Institute Medal for design. Tibor Reich was a man of many enthusiasms. In the 1950s he designed a range of pottery, 'Tigoware', for Denby ceramics, while his collection of miniature cars was exhibited at the Tiatsa Gallery in Ely Street in Stratford where his wife Freda presided over the fabric sales floor. Tibor's designs for Royal Mail's First Day covers were collected across the world. Tibor Reich always acknowledged three dominant influences in his textile work. He remembered colorful motifs from the traditional costume of his native Hungary and from visits he made to his father's factory where yams were spun for brightly dyed ribbons. He studied the textile designs associated with the Bauhaus school created in the 1920s and 1930s for mass produc-A scene in a Shakespearian play on fabric tion. and his Leeds studies of weaving technology with Jacquard and other Dobby looms led to experimental work with different new fibers such as rayon and Lurex, exploring the complexities of Jacquard looms for fabric creation. As methods and sizes of loom changed the Clifford Mill workshop was closed and the weaving was transferred to Cumbria. But the fabrics continued to be sold at the Tiatsa showrooms until his retirement. Towards the end of his life Tibor presented several thousand samples of woven and printed fabrics to his old university at Leeds where a Tibor Reich Collection has been established at the International Textiles Archive. Tibor Reich died in his 80th year in 1996. Tibor's work is now highly collectable and the family is shortly setting up a website where it will be possible to view and buy Qriginal samples of the fabrics. For more information contact Linda Fraser at fraserjl@hotmail.com. Page 5
