Age Of Kings, a screen print in eight colours on mercerised cotton-satin, representing the actual and mythical kings of England: 48 inches wide, dated 1960s. Example in the care of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Reproduced by kind permission of the Reich family.
Tibor Reich was a Hungarian who fled the Nazis and established his home and his business at Clifford Mill in Clifford Chambers in 1945. In spite of the wartime shortage of yarns, he here produced fabrics that were innovative in their textured surfaces and abstract patterns. Modernism was then a powerful force in the fine and applied arts and Tibor Reich was part of this movement.
He developed his fabrics technically, both printed fabrics using photographic sources and woven designs using colourways in complex combinations ‘like a paintbox’. As he became highly successful, his public commissions included the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre renovation in 1952. He moved, and the Mill closed in 1978 partly because of the constant risk of flooding. However, some of his fabrics are still in their commissioned situations in public buildings (including the Shakespeare Centre), redolent of their period but subtle, and enduring.
