How did a simple pebble inspire a fabric design that has been shipped all over the world? A new exhibition at Horsham Museum sheds light on one designer’s creative process through her sketchbooks, notes, garments and fabric swatches.

Fran White moved her business The Linen Shop from rural Nuthurst into the town’s busy Carfax just over a year ago and quickly made her presence felt by winning the competition for Horsham’s best Christmas window display.

The award put the spotlight on a career that has seen her move from styling photographic backdrops to designing fabrics used on the sets of Hollywood films. By her own admission, White was something of a late starter as a designer, enrolling at college in her mid-40s to study woven and printed cloth.

She had always had a passion for textiles; after working as a photographer’s stylist, when she would source props for shoots, she set up Linen Hire in the 1980s, a business hiring out backdrops for use in advertising and editorial photography.

If someone needed a damask table cloth, lace curtains or similar, they came to her.

But it would be another decade before she turned her own hand to designing and making fabric.

Although she had studied part-time to learn about the way fabric was made, White had never been to college full-time before enrolling at Farnham, in Surrey. “I found it extremely exciting, terrifying and challenging,” she says. “I learnt so much about textiles and the creative process.”

Her collection of tablecloths inspired a particular fascination with linen and White has gone on to specialise in producing the fabric for The Linen Shop.

But first she had to source mills willing to weave small quantities of her designs and then find buyers. Hove-based designer Nicole Urbanski was one of the first to snap up White’s fabrics to use in her fashion designs; now they are shipped to buyers all over the world.

Recently, Hollywood even came knocking when a set buyer for Bright Star – the 2009 film about the life of poet John Keats – came to the shop to buy fabrics for use in the film’s interior scenes after reading about her work in design magazine Selvedge. White’s textiles will also be used in a forthcoming film, although she’s been sworn to secrecy as to the details.

Horsham Museum’s exhibition – Woven Inspiration – draws on White’s extensive work in textiles. It brings together the sketchbooks, where a design will begin life (including the beach pebble whose colours inspired one of her earliest designs), the fabric that results from them and their many uses in interiors and clothing.

“I think the world is limitless when it comes to designing textiles. You can dream up all kinds of fabulous ideas. The challenge is in putting all your ideas into production.

You have to tie the creative side in with the practical to make this work.”

The exhibition is a testament to “a Horsham story of quiet, unassuming creativity,”

according to curator Jeremy Knight. “Contemporary art can sometimes be seen as abstract and occasionally unintelligible; contemporary design can also give that impression. However, as the exhibition shows, Fran White’s designs, though contemporary, are also readily understandable.

They combine simplicity, structure and palette with quality,” says Knight.

Founded in 2001, The Linen Shop stocks a huge range of textiles woven in Belgium and Scotland, plus linen clothing handmade in the UK, including kimono robes, scarves and jackets.

The company also offers a bespoke design service where White will make up curtains, blinds and soft furnishings from her fabrics.

*Woven Inspiration runs at Horsham Museum, Causeway, until April 11.

For more information, call 01403 254959 or visit www.horshammuseum.org *Find out more about Fran White and The Linen Shop at www.thelinenshop.biz celebrating sussex