1000 Patterns

This volume was conceived and edited by Drusilla Cole. She selected the patterns and their arrangements on the page, wrote most of the text including the ‘General Introduction’, introductions to all of the sections, the whole of the ‘Pre-Industrial’ and ‘Post-Industrial’ sections and the captions. She also decided upon the ordering of the sections so that a sense of historical development by geographic region is made clear and in order to prevent the volume being dominated by a Euro-centric ethos. To this end the opening sections in ‘1000 Patterns’ begin with Oceania, followed by Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, and Central and Western Asia.

Cole also originated the ‘Pattern Finder’ section allowing the reader to search by motif and subject matter. There are six categories in the ‘Pattern Finder’ specifically: regions/ethnic origin; basic shapes; natural shapes; mythological, religious and symbolic patterns; artefacts; and named periods/art movements.

Designers whose patterns are featured include Dagobert Peche one of the members of the Wiener Werkstätte, the English artist Paul Nash, the Mexican weaver Ana Cecilia Cruz Alberto and the Russian Constructivist Vavara Stepanova. However because of the nature of the discipline, many of the selected examples are un-attributed.

‘1000 Patterns’ was also published by Design Exchange in Japan in 2003 (ISBN: 4-86083-397-X) and by Dessain el Tolra in France in 2003 (ISBN: 2-04-720106-). Subsequently the volume was also published in the USA, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.