Bridge For Design Spring 2014 Bridge For Design Spring 2014 Issue | Page 54

DESIGN TRENDS | view point

INSPIRING MEMORIES
Snaphots from times gone by are behind my design ideas says Barry Dixon

I

nspiration is everywhere. It lives in the memory of our
past, the vibrancy of our present and the possibility of
our future. It hides in plain sight in the view outside our
window and it sits on a shelf inside our home. It lurks in
foreign ports of call and waits patiently in our own backyard. It
whispers to us in our dreams and screams at us in our waking
moments, urging that moment of glorious combustion when
our thoughts collide to spark our imagination.
From the hay fields outside my windows to a treasured
cocoa tin from my childhood, the following remembrances
detail sources of my own design inspiration.
The vivid clarity of a now long forgotten dream slowly
succumbed to the hazy reality of another summer morning in
Fauquier County.
A steady drone of modern machinery had lured me from
one state of consciousness to another, and I realised that the
audio portion of my altered state was actually my friend Ricky
cutting the tall grass in the pastures beyond the low stone walls
that separate Elway Hall from Elway Farm.
Peering through the windows of my bedroom aerie I could
chart his progress: long furrowed rivulets of silken strands
combed into place by the line of blades in his wake, such order
in the concentric curves as he turned a graceful one-eighty to
plod a parallel path in the vale.
Later he would roll the fallen straw into mammoth coils that
would be left to dry further in the June sun. I always love the
look of the rolling hills dotted with the large, sweet smelling
bales, their undulating forms crispened by the fresh, clean cut.
By July I noticed that he had, with deft efficiency, stacked
the rolled bales vertically two and three tall to keep them ‘high
and dry’. The resultant wall was like some wonderful,
angle-less honeycomb - again with the mesmerising op-art
effect of the concentric circles at the bales’ ends - that became
a snapshot in my memory.

54

Bridge for Design Spring 2014

The old cocoa tin on the shelf of my grandmother’s pantry
was a ruse. Almost a century had passed since its mottled
interior had held the sweet brown powder. The acrid smell
of rolled bills and heavy coins mixed oddly with a lingering
chocolate scent, because that’s where Nettie kept her secret
stash of money, (of course).
When the neighbouring farmer delivered the fresh country
butter pressed in a round wooden mould and wrapped in
waxed paper, the tin came down from the shelf, as it did when
we were going into town for an ice cream cone or when we
kids needed ‘pocket money’ for our trip back home.
The bittersweet colour of the box itself provided
strong contrast to the graphic tones of the label and floral
ornamentation, the latter executed in an almost scientific
fashion, illustrating the ‘specimen’ of the cacao plant as it grew
naturally in its tropical homeland. How exotic the broadveined leaves and the nubby cacao pods must have seemed
on the shelf of the 19th century general store where her
grandmother bought the tin.
The pattern on the box seems exotic to me even now,
perhaps more so for the generations of memory and familiarity
that it represents. Years later, when Nettie passed that modest
little touchstone became my link to our past.
Both ‘Crop Art Circles’ and ‘Cacao Vine’ have become bestselling fabrics in our textile collection for Vervain/S. Harris.
Each an individual abstraction of a specific, personal object or
observation collated into a product for a modern designer to
employ in their own specific and personal ways.
Look. Think. Create! B

■

Barry Darr Dixon
8394 Elway Lane, Warrenton, VA 20186
T: +001 540 341 8501 | www.barrydixon.com