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Enid Marx’s material modern

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This book reassesses Enid Marx’s patterns as sites of queer history, imperial modernity and material innovation, offering an archival and contextual study of her designs within interwar British cul...
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  • 12 January 2027
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Enid Marx’s material modern examines the abstract patterns created by Enid Marx as sites where queer histories, imperial legacies and modern design practices converge. It focuses on her block-printed and woven motifs from 1922–27, situating them within interwar debates about popular culture, colonial display and the racialised construction of the ‘primitive’. The book analyses Marx’s collaborations, professional networks and technical approaches, tracing how her engagements with craft, industry and colour theory shaped her contribution to British modernity. Drawing on archival materials, it reassesses Marx’s practice through the lenses of queer theory, material culture and intersectional analysis. By foregrounding the social, political and aesthetic contexts that informed her work, the study offers a critical reappraisal of Marx’s role in modern British textile design and its relationship to broader imperial and cultural narratives.
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Price: £85.00
Pages: 208
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Studies in Design and Material Culture
Publication Date: 12 January 2027
ISBN: 9781526173003
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945), DESIGN / History & Criticism, DESIGN / Textile & Costume, Material culture, Fashion and textile design

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Lotte Crawford is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Exeter

Introduction
1 Enid Marx’s ‘popular’ culture
2 Racialisation and ‘primitive’ pattern
3 Pattern and under-texture: surface with subtext
4 Inside The Little Gallery: commodity, capital, kinship, nationhood
5 Industrial design: from the subterranean modern to Utility textiles
Afterword
Bibliography