I started this blog to promote my research, which examines the intersections between art, design and business in twentieth-century Australia. At the moment I am investigating textile prints designed by Australian artists.
My fascination with Australian artist-designed prints began with writing my doctoral thesis. I originally decided to write about Claudio Alcorso (b. 1913 – d. 2000), an Italian-Australian entrepreneur whose Tasmanian-based fabric manufacturing businesses included Silk & Textile Printers (STP) and Universal Textiles Australia (UTA). His name was familiar to me because our family business, Rain’N Shine Pty Ltd bought fabrics from Alcorso and had many bespoke textile designs printed by Tennyson Textiles, STP’s main competitor in Sydney who merged their business with the Alcorso’s in the 1960s.
My research led me down many rabbit holes. Eventually, at the suggestion of my supervisor Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil, I decided to ‘focus on the fabrics’. As well as investigating artist-designed textiles, I ended up describing the wider history of post-war migrant influence on the Australian textile industry. If you are interested, you can read my thesis online here.