Edinburgh Weavers' innovative range of 'Constructivist' textiles was the result of a collaboration between the firm's Artistic Director Alastair Morton, the artist Ben Nicholson and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Morton was fascinated by modernist art and buildings and he called this Autumn 1937 range 'a conscious attempt to build a contemporary style in decoration in keeping with modern architecture and present-day culture generally... based on the beauty of pure shapes and colours.'

This textile, 'Counterpoint', was ideally suited to the type of minimal interior in light colours with simple, sculptural furniture that was then fashionable. Britain was relatively late to adopt these ideas inspired by European designers like those from the Bauhaus design school. Originating in Russia, Constructivism was one of the many movements which fed into the modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. Characteristically abstract and geometric in appearance, Constructivist works arose from the post-First World War desire to build a new society.