A collection of retro influenced mid-century modern prints and patterns, available from various shops on Etsy - lovely..

Inaluxe
Etsy Shop - http://www.etsy.com/shop/inaluxe
Blog - www.inaluxe.blogspot.com

Drawstring Studio
Etsy Shop - http://www.etsy.com/shop/drawstringstudio

Gunta Stolzl

"Gunta Stölzl (5 March 1897 – 22 April 1983) was a German textile artist  who played a fundamental role in the development of the Bauhaus school’s weaving workshop. As the Bauhaus’s only female master she created enormous change within the weaving department as it transitioned from individual pictorial works to modern industrial designs. She joined the Bauhaus as a student in 1920, became a junior master in 1927 and a full master the next year. She was dismissed for political reasons in 1931, a year before the Bauhaus closed under pressure from the Nazis.  The textile department was a neglected part of the Bauhaus when Ms. Stölzl began her career, and its active masters were weak on the technical aspects of textile production. She soon became a mentor to other students and reopened the Bauhaus dye studios in 1921. After a brief departure, Stölzl became the school's weaving director in 1925 when it relocated from Weimar to Dessau and expanded the department to increase its weaving and dyeing facilities. She applied ideas from modern art to weaving, experimented with synthetic materials, and improved the department's technical instruction to include courses in mathematics. The Bauhaus weaving workshop became one of its most successful facilities under her direction."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunta_St%C3%B6lzl

http://www.guntastolzl.org
http://theinternetwork.com.au/gunta-stolzl/
http://carlagrbac.blogspot.com/2010/09/gunta-stolzl.html
http://fannybostromscuriosities.blogspot.com/2009/08/gunta-stolzl.html
http://portalenportalen.blogspot.com/2009/12/gunta-stolzl.html

Anni Albers
Gallery of her Bauhaus texiles and some examples of later pattern work

"At Walter Gropius's Bauhaus she began her first year under Georg Muche and then Johannes Itten. Women were barred from certain disciplines taught at the school, especially architecture, and during her second year, unable to get into a glass workshop with future husband Josef Albers, Anni Albers deferred reluctantly to weaving. With her instructor Gunta Stölzl, however, Albers soon learned to love weaving's tactile construction challenges." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anni_Albers

http://www.albersfoundation.org/Home.php

Also, see my previous post on 'The Bauhaus Style' http://kathykavan.com/the-bauhaus-style-modernism-design

"Ninety years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar. It existed for only 14 years, but it became the most important school of modernity. With Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marcks, Adolf Meyer, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Hinnerk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer, Joost Schmidt, Lothar Schreyer and Gunta Stölzl, a faculty with an international reputation worked under the direction of Walter Gropius (1919-1928), Hannes Meyer (1928-1930) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1930-1933) at the Bauhaus.  The Bauhaus is Germany’s most successful contribution to international art and culture of modernity in the early 20th century. More than 75 years after it was closed in Berlin, the reputation of this inter-disciplinary school for architecture, design, visual and performing arts that moved to Dessau in 1925 continues to be as internationally significant as ever. The vibrancy and impact of the Bauhaus during its existence and after its dissolution in 1933 demonstrate that although the Bauhaus, as a laboratory and workshop of modernity, was destroyed by a deliberate political act, it was exactly that circumstance that enabled it to unfurl its global influence – history’s irony." http://facesofdesign.com/event/bauhaus-conceptual-model

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Modernism + Science + Tech + Graphic Design = Win

"This is a random assortment of science ads collected from various science and tech magazines of the 50s and 60s. We're particularly struck by how they have utilized the modernist aesthetic in a manner particularly appropriate for its subject matter."

From Bustbright's massive collection http://www.flickr.com/photos/bustbright/sets/72157612943324998/with/4507172146/

I've been meaning to collate a post on Pirelli ads from the 50's & 60's for a while, I find this era the most graphically inspiring from the brand.
"In the 1950s and 1960s, as the Pirelli group became international, Pirelli chose great European designers, such as Max Huber, Pavel M. Engelmann, Bob Noorda, Albe Steiner e Raymond Savignac. While Italian designers included Bruno Munari, Armando Testa, Riccardo Manzi, Giulio Confalonieri and Pino Tovaglia."

Here's some favourites, with reference to the source below...
http://www.pirelli.com/web/group/brand/advertising/default.page
http://www.thisisdisplay.org/tag/Pirelli
http://www.thisisdisplay.org/features/Bob_Noorda_1927-2010/
http://80magazine.wordpress.com/category/pirelli/

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