Wild Thing
Dress Fabric
1972 (designed)
1972 (designed)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
T-shirt dress fabric of screen-printed single-knit cotton jersey. With a diamanté accented repeating pattern with a snarling leopard and the words 'WILD THING'. The leopards' red tongues are individually appliquéd in satin patches.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Wild Thing (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Screen-printed cotton jersey, satin appliqué and diamantés |
| Brief description | T-shirt dress fabric 'Wild Thing' of screen-printed single-knit cotton jersey, designed by John Dove and Molly White for Wonder Workshop, England, 1972 |
| Physical description | T-shirt dress fabric of screen-printed single-knit cotton jersey. With a diamanté accented repeating pattern with a snarling leopard and the words 'WILD THING'. The leopards' red tongues are individually appliquéd in satin patches. |
| Dimensions |
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| Production type | Limited edition |
| Marks and inscriptions | 'WILD / THING' (Part of repeating design below the leopard) |
| Object history | According to the designers, this fabric was intended to be made into T-shirts. In “The T-Shirt Book” (Ebury Press 1988) Alice Hiller writes: "John Dove and Molly White started out mixing all their own inks and in 1970 worked out how to print on Black T-shirts - commercially produced inks which did this, only became available in 1975 - and used the technique for the WILD THING T. Designed as a tribute to Jimi Hendrix, it featured a roaring Leopard head with the words WILD THING underneath and was pirated from America to Brazil to become the first global T-shirt hit. Its success launched rhinestones as a major T-shirt fashion and by 1973 they were selling thousands of shirts under their Wonder Workshop label." |
| Subject depicted | |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | CIRC.3-1974 |
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| Record created | January 16, 2008 |
| Record URL |
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