Collier Campbell Balcony Stripe Academy Fabrics Textile Wall Art – 1980s Painted Stripe Framed Panel

Susan Collier & Sarah Campbell — Balcony Stripe. Original screen-printed furnishing fabric for Academy Fabrics. Selvedge reads: "Academy Fabrics — Balcony Stripe by Collier Campbell." A large, exuberant vertical stripe composition in terracotta, teal, pink, blue, sage green, sand and cream — each band animated with hand-painted wavy lines, dashes, dots and serpentine marks that carry the energy of the original brushstroke directly into the printed cloth. Professionally stretched over a new wooden frame. 127 cm × 48 cm. Excellent vintage condition.

Currently exhibiting at the Fashion and Textile Museum, London. In the V&A collection. Britain's most celebrated post-war textile design partnership.

Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell are two of the most significant textile designers of the twentieth century — a partnership that began in the 1960s when Susan walked into Liberty of London with a portfolio of hand-painted designs and left with six of them sold. What followed was fifty years of work that changed the look of British interiors, fashion and design. In 1971 Yves Saint Laurent used Collier Campbell's gypsy-inspired patterns as the inspiration for his first ever ready-to-wear Rive Gauche collection. Bill Gibb incorporated their painted stripe Quickstep into his 1974 summer designs. They were the first women to win the Duke of Edinburgh's Designer Prize, in 1984. The V&A holds 33 works from the Collier Campbell archive. From March to September 2026, the Fashion and Textile Museum in London is staging a major retrospective — Paint! Pattern! Print!: The Textiles of Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell — the most comprehensive exhibition of their work ever mounted.

The guiding principle behind everything Collier Campbell produced was stated simply by the sisters themselves: "The painted mark gives energy and beauty to fabric." It is a philosophy visible in every inch of Balcony Stripe.

Balcony Stripe

The stripe was one of Collier Campbell's most characteristic and enduring formats — a vehicle for their extraordinary gift for colour and their insistence that the energy of hand-painting should survive translation into mass production. Balcony Stripe is a wide-repeat composition of vertical bands, each one differentiated not only by colour but by its internal mark-making: wavy lines, elongated dashes, trailing serpentine forms, scattered dots and fine parallel hatching. Terracotta sits against teal, pink against sage, sand against deep blue — the palette warm, Mediterranean, evocative of sun-bleached walls and painted shutters. At 147× 48 cm, the piece fills a wall with colour and movement in the way only the finest printed textiles can.

This piece has been handcrafted using rare, original vintage fabric, professionally stretched over a newly constructed wooden frame — transforming a collectible furnishing fabric into a gallery-quality textile artwork. The colours remain rich, warm and wonderfully vibrant.

Specifications

Condition

Excellent vintage condition. Colours remain rich, warm and vibrant. As with all genuine vintage textiles, minor age-related characteristics may be present — entirely consistent with a piece of this age and adding to its authentic character.

YSL. The Duke of Edinburgh's Prize. The Fashion and Textile Museum. And now available for your wall.

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