Frances Burke: Designer of Modern Textiles brings overdue attention to one of the major figures in Australian modernist design.

Burke was central to the development of locally produced printed textiles from the 1930s onward, creating fabrics that drew together European modernism, abstraction, natural forms and distinctly Australian references. Her work moved through fashion, interiors, architecture and public commissions, helping establish textile design as something more ambitious than decorative accompaniment.

Her fabrics sat inside houses, shops, wardrobes and civic interiors: modernism made domestic, tactile and repeatable. The book combines biography, archival material, photographs, drawings and generous reproductions of her textile designs, including patterns based on birds, plants, fish and more abstract forms. It is both a design history and a very handsome object in its own right, with enough visual material to function almost as a pattern archive.

The Miegunyah Press / Melbourne University Publishing, Carlton, Victoria, 2021. First edition. Hardcover. Very light shelf and handling wear only; corners and boards clean and sharp. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Near fine condition.