Festival Pattern Group Wallpaper, 1951

Large hand-screen printed wallpaper sample in shades of green, Afwillite 8.45 pattern, FPG 35, crystallographer Helen Megaw, designed by William J. Odell, made (printed) by John Line and Sons Ltd., Southall and London, design used in the Regatta Restaurant and on display stands at the Exhibition of Science. From a collection of 83 samples designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

This wallpaper appeared in the Regatta Restaurant, built on the Southbank as part of the Festival of Britain. It was designed by William J Odell and printed by John Line and Sons and based on the mineral afwillite. Helen Megaw, who determined its atomic structure, supplied Odell with a contour map of the mineral’s inner atoms. The ‘peaks’ with six or seven contours show calcium atoms, those with five contours show silicon, and the others show hydroxyl and water. Even though there was an appetite for patterns based on atoms, only a few of the Festival Pattern Group designs were mass-produced, and even fewer were commercially successful.