Dawn Frasier has an obsession. It seems she went to the travel agency in 1962 to get a ticket to Hawaii, and never quite managed to return in one piece. Her surface designs and paintings are littered with tiki and tapa, and western-style interpretations of shields, drums, and totems.

 

abstractiva2


tongan tapa

 

Dawn has made an active study of the traditional designs of Pacific art forms and has travelled extensively in the South Pacific. Her use of these rich and highly decorative organic forms is tempered by her inclusion of the angular and extended motifs of mid-century atomic design.

 

starburst

 

mod pa

 

nu ku gu

 

The use of hand drawn shapes, distortion of forms, drop-shadow and  mis-registered colour enhance the vintage flavour of these vibrant patterns. And while her palette is limited, and seems centred on colours synonymous with island life – lots of blues and greens, punctuated with oranges, browns, and black – that’s fine by me, I love those rich aquas too!

 

mo daywear

 

polynesian within

 

My favourite is the Polynesian Within – I like the way the gentle egg-shaped shields float at varying depths over the surface of the fabric; the design is rich and full but simple in structure.

 

mana mohala


Dawn is currently working on a collection of designs for lampshades. Previously, her designs have also been applied to the front of journals, i-phone cases, wallets, t-shirts, and glasses through cafe-press  – and she’ll even make you a shirt if you ask her.

She has also written a book, Tapa Designs of the Pacific, which includes a collection of copyright-free tapa designs. The aim of the book is to provide a design resource for other surface designers, and is due for publication shortly.

You can find more about Dawn Frasier and her work at Sophista-tiki.com, and her fabrics can be found on her page at Spoonflower.