Hilary Bourne was born in Guntakal, British India (now India) in 1909. When she was three her family immigrated to Ditchling, Sussex, England where she learned spinning and dyeing from a neighbour. In 1936, Bourne met the designer Barbara Allen and the two established a successful business, becoming pioneers of modern textile design, with clients including the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank and Heathrow Airport. Bourne eventually founded the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in 1985, after Allen's death, creating an important platform for often neglected British crafts, both historic and contemporary.
Textile designer and weaver, Hilary Bourne was born in Guntakal, British India (now India) in 1909. When she was three her family immigrated to England to Ditchling in Sussex where she learned spinning and dyeing from a neighbour. As an adult, she went to Mandatory Palestine (now Palestine) to help her sister Marjorie with her newborn. There, she also assisted émigrée Russian Orthodox nuns, who were experts in linen weaving, in establishing their own business and, in the process, she learned indigo dyeing. Following the Second World War, Bourne was briefly a designer at Ethel Mairet's Gospels workshop back in Ditchling, where she acquired the skill of aniline dyeing under the tutelage of Margery Kendon and Phyllis Barron.
Relocating to London, Bourne joined Muriel Rose’s Little Gallery, where she sold contemporary craft pieces by emerging artisans, including industrial textile designer Enid Marx, jeweller and silversmith Casty Cobb, the Hong-Kong born ‘father of British studio pottery’ Bernard Leach, and the Japanese potter, Shōji Hamada. While working at the Westminster Theatre in 1936, Bourne met Barbara Allen (1903–72), who would become her lifelong partner. While Bourne thrived as a commercial hand-weaver, Allen was the theatre’s in-house costume and set designer. They soon started sharing a flat in South Kensington, where Bourne initially established her hand-weaving practice. Following the bombing of their home during the Second World War, the couple moved to Gloucestershire, initially renting a cottage, before moving to a larger house, where they also took care of their elderly mothers.
Bourne and Allen began a joint enterprise that flourished into a prosperous business by the 1950s. Their studio became known for producing meticulously crafted fabrics with complex and abstract geometric patterns, coloured using natural dyes, and woven on traditional hand looms that generated pieces of great tactility. Their colour palette drew inspiration from the natural world, as well as from a bold and contemporary primary spectrum. They also pioneered the use of Lurex (a new modern filament). Bourne and Allen’s artistic influences were international, evident both in their creations and in their extensive private textile collection, accumulated during frequent travels across Europe, America, the Caribbean, Iran, and Japan. They were influenced by abstract motifs found in Zapotec weavings, the precision of Indian woodblock techniques, and the vivid palettes of Japanese silks. Detailed records of their acquisitions, including purchase locations and dates, were diligently maintained.
Commercially, the Bourne-Allen portfolio encompassed a wide range of projects, from theatrical costumes and airplane interiors to tweed for the London store, Fortnum & Mason, scarves for Liberty, furnishing fabrics for Heal's, and architectural textile commissions for Heathrow Airport and London's South Bank Cinema, among other clients. During this period, their clientele included notable figures such as Sadie Speight, an architect and interior designer, who was married to Leslie Martin, the architect responsible for the design of the Royal Festival Hall. One of their most important commissions was for modernist textiles for the RFHas part of the 1951 Festival of Britain. The couple made fabrics for the auditorium, including the heavy red-and-white backdrop curtains for the boxes. Bourne and Allen were also part of a broader community comprising women weavers, architects, designers, and patrons which thrived in Ditchling at a time when professional opportunities for women were limited.
Barbara Allen died in a hotel fire in Cambridge in 1972, which left Bourne with severe injuries. Overwhelmed by grief, she destroyed much of their business records and samples, which now poses challenges in reconstructing their legacy. After a period of recuperation in Yorkshire, Bourne returned to Ditchling and supported her sister, Joanna, in caring for their mother. The sisters subsequently purchased a dilapidated schoolhouse in the village and established the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in 1985. The 2023-24 exhibition Double Weave: Bourne and Allen's Modernist Textiles at the Ditchling Museum showcased the pioneering work of these two designers and their important contribution, which has often been overlooked. For example, the couple were commissioned to create, weave, and dye costumes for the iconic 1959 film Ben Hur, a vast undertaking which entailed producing 52,000 yards of specially woven fabric to dress 452 actors and an additional 25,000 extras. Their earnings from this were transformative: they maintained a thriving business, acquired two homes in Regent’s Park, London, alongside a nightclub and hotel in Ireland. However, it was only the main designer, Elizabeth Haffenden, who received the Oscar and acclaim for the costume design. The exhibition also featured an immersive installation by Omeima Mudawi-Rowlings, a deaf British-Sudanese textile artist and independent curator, alongside a collection of textile samples crafted by local weaver, Poppy Fuller Abbott. Hilary Bourne died in Ditchling, Sussex, England in 2004. In the UK public domain, her work is housed in the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, V&A, and Seven Stories Archive.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hilary Bourne ]
Publications related to [Hilary Bourne ] in the Ben Uri Library