Walter Fielden Royle: Packets 4-6 – Men’s shirtings
Packet 4
University of Brighton
Dress and Textile History Teaching Collection
Walter Fielden Royle designs for printed dress textiles, 1920-1961.
Teaching Collection number TEAF 329
This packet is one of 3, containing of a rare group of shirting designs produced for the textile print trade in Manchester probably between 1946-60. Exact dates are not known. Every design is different from the other – though all are very similar indeed in proportions, colours and patterns.
Walter Fielden Royle (1900-1981) was a freelance textile designer who worked in the mass production Manchester textile trade all his life, from the 20s and 30s. After his apprenticeship, starting at the age of 16 in a Manchester print design studio, he worked as an apprentice and then as a textile designer there for a few years before establishing his own studio in 1926 employing others by the 1930s. With a break in WWII, when he served in the RAF, he again ran his own studio until he retired in 1961. In his lifetime, Royle was acknowledged as a leading and successful textile designer in Manchester, evidenced by the inclusion of his studio and illustrations of four of his fashion textile designs for women’s dress in H.G. Hayes Marshall’s book of 1939, British Textile Designers Today. This is the first time, however, that these original shirting designs have been place in public view.
Packets 4, 1-76 thus contains seventy-six mens cotton print shirting designs, perhaps mostly from the post WWII period. All are hand painted on small size cards. Many are striped vertically in strong colours, whilst others consist of very small conventional, mostly geometrical, repeat designs.
Packet 5
University of Brighton
Dress and Textile History Teaching Collection
Walter Fielden Royle designs for printed dress textiles, 1920-1961.
Teaching Collection number TEAF 329
These images contain men’s cotton print shirting designs, perhaps mostly from the post WW2 period. A typical selection of designs and colours is shown here.
This collection in its entirety consists of a rare group of over 330 unsold original fashion/dress and shirting designs produced for the textile print trade in Manchester between 1926-1961. Our Brighton collection contains 7 packets of 301 original designs on paper – 109 designs for women’s fashion fabrics and a further 201 designs for men’s shirtings. Every design is different from the other – hand painted on card, mostly by Fielden Royle.
Packet 6
University of Brighton
Dress and Textile History Teaching Collection
Walter Fielden Royle designs for printed dress textiles, 1920-1961.
Teaching Collection number TEAF 329
These images contain men’s cotton print shirting designs, perhaps mostly from the post WW2 period. A typical selection of designs and colours is shown here.
This collection in its entirety consists of a rare group of over 330 unsold original fashion/dress and shirting designs produced for the textile print trade in Manchester between 1926-1961. Our Brighton collection contains 7 packets of 301 original designs on paper – 109 designs for women’s fashion fabrics and a further 201 designs for men’s shirtings. Every design is different from the other – hand painted on card, mostly by Fielden Royle.
