A really long shirt description:  

Ahhh, the Boomerang Beat is so hip man!  And this icongraphy is soooo 50s, you just can't get more authentic than this!    The 50's boomerang image began as a highly stylized delta wing jet aircraft - flying across the brilliant future science had promised.  There is a sense of perputual motion as the boomerangs fling across the print, with the curved brown lines in the background reinforcing movement, but perhaps in an even more curvy, sensual and therefore living way.  Playfully morphing technology into the lines, curves and movements of living things is a 50s' trademark.  The background color is tan-beige with a dinstict shade of salmon pink.  White, black, light blue, dark aqua, dark chartreuse and dark salmon are other colors used.  This print is on barkcloth, which is a type of cotton weave that is denser and more textured than typical cotton fabrics, but  is very authentic to the 50s.

 

Our retro line really recalls the very best of 1950's graphics.  The 50s weren't all hip and cool - like most decades, even the 50's fabric was dominated by florals.  But when a designer did diverge, what a marvelous thing it was!

 

You can see the history of florals in some retro prints - but the floral motifs have been reinterpreted as amoebic blobs, highly stylized leaves and flowers that start to seem mechanical.  In contrast, often mechanical and scientific figures, such as TVs, airplanes, antennae, tubes, atomic symbols - are drawn as biomorphic - given the contours and lines related to flora and fauna.  Take the famous 50s' graphic design of the boomerang - it originated as a reinterpretation of the delta wng jet aircraft, but it flings across the fabric like a living thing.

 

The book, Famulous Fabrics of the 50s (and Other Terrific Textiles of the 20s, 30s, & 40s) by Gideon Bosker (Author), Michele Mancini (Author), John Gramstad (Author), Bruce Beaton (Photography), Michele Mancini (Author) , John Gramstad (Author) contains several pages of authentic fabric htat clearly originated our own collection.  This book attributes the sources of inspiration, or in some cases the very designs themselves to modern artists Jean Arp, Joan Miro and Harry Bertoia.  For samples of their work:

 

Jean Arp - Strasbourg born sculptor.  Retrospectives of his artwork were being held in the 50s.

 

Joan Miro, a Spanish surrealist painter and sculputor

 

Harry Bertoia- Italian-born American Abstract Sculptor and Deisnger (1915 - 1978)