We often talk about architectural fashion, but, in the history of fashion and design, there are also architects who tried to create collections or designed patterns for textiles.
One iconic pattern that actually didn't go into production in the end, is called "La Farfalla di Battista" (The Butterfly of Battista) and was the only one designed by Archizoom Associati's Andrea Branzi to show how the vocabulary of Italian radical design may have been applied to fabrics and textiles. The pattern was designed in 1967 and Poltronova manufactured some samples and prototypes.
Inspired by Pop Art and in particular by Roy Lichtenstein, Ben-Day dots and the illustrations and children's bedroom furniture of Italian Antonio Rubino, the textile shows a butterfly flying over a lawn with patterned flowers, against polka-dotted clouds in a star-studded sky.
The design was a sort of flat representation of the colourful entrance at the legendary "Superarchitettura" exhibition that took place at Pistoia's Jolly 2 Gallery in 1966 (second image in this post) and was conceived as a child's bedcover and as curtain fabric (the lightweight synthetic weave was intended to flutter like the butterfly on the fabric).
Samples of "Farfalla di Battista" are in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. At times, you may stumble upon it at auctions, and, in case you do, you should remember that it is worth around $5,000-6,000 (anything below that it's a bargain, so, if you can afford it, buy it as it may turn into an investment).
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