Insulin wallpaper

Five years ago I discovered I was diabetic. It's quite as tedious as you would imagine. A couple of years later I visited the Wellcome Collection, that brilliant though oddly quiet museum opposite Euston Station, and there to my delight I found something that connected my two-a-penny illness with one of my all time favourite things: the Festival of Britain. Because their From Atoms to Patterns exhibition told the story of the biologists and designers who worked together for the Festival of Britain to create futuristic items based on molecule and cell diagrams. And my favourite would be insulin wallpaper, designed by Robert Sevant for manufacturer John Line and Sons, inspired by images produced by one of the great names of British science, Dorothy Hodgkin. Here's the design:

And here's curator Mary Schoeser on just how those scientists and designers worked together from the late forties in the Festival Pattern Group.

Here's a lovely audio slideshow from the BBC to commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth.  Wonderful hearing stories about great scientists working with great designers to produce something amazing, just for the joy of it. Even this eeyoreish diabetic left the exhibition with a spring in his step.