大象传媒

The thousands of visitors to the 1951 Festival of Britain were greeted with textile designs on wallpaper and furnishings that had come from atomic scale images created by X ray crystrallography. Images of compounds such as insulin and haemoglobin informed almost every aspect of the festival d茅cor. It was the result of a unique collaboration between textile designers, manufacturers and scientists.

Tilly examines the evolution of the Festival Pattern Group, who would weave a fine line between good design and scientific credibility. As the Group鈥檚 molecular patterns on wallpaper and clothing held in the Science Museum Group鈥檚 collection reveal, a new window into an invisible molecular world now opened up to the public, a world which previously had only been visible to scientists. Whilst it was all part of the Festival鈥檚 post war 鈥渢onic to the nation鈥� it rendered the atom benign in an era of cold war anxiety about the excesses of science. It also raised the cultural profile of crystallography.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Produced in partnership with The Science Museum Group

Photograph courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum