Furnishing fabric: Splotchy

In the decades following the end of World War II, the clean lines, open plans, and glass walls of modern homes and office buildings brought about dramatic changes in furnishing fabrics, and ushered in a period of extraordinary creativity in textile design. The innovative husband-and-wife team Erwin and Estelle Laverne, specialized in hand-printed fabrics and wallpapers, both in their own designs and in those they commissioned from important artists in other media. "Splotchy" was designed by Alexander Calder for Laverne's "Contempora" series, and is an excellent example of his abstract sculptural shapes transformed into a three-color printed textile.