Edouard Benedictus - chemist and textile designer

Edouard Benedictus (1878-1930) was born in France and his career spanned several diverse disciplines including, chemistry, music composition and textile design. He is well known as the inventor of laminated safety glass but we’ll focus on the pattern design here.

His designs span the transitional period between Art Nouveau and Art Deco and were intended for use as fabrics, upholstery and wallpaper.

We love Benedictus’ Art Deco Designs in Colour published by Dover, New York. This book features the works which he produced in 1924, 1926 and 1930. He used a complicated stencil technique known as ‘pochoir’ and loved bold blocks of colour. His abstracted floral style has been influential ever since and we can’t wait to have a go at this ourselves.