String Art

1970s Fads: String Art

By Patrick Mondout

String art, one of the artistic fads of the Super70s, was both pop art and a bit of a challenge. You could choose from a wide range of complete but unassembled kits ranging from owls to butterflies to ships. These kits had all the components necessary to create your work of art including: a board (often covered by black velvet), nails (which had to be pounded into a pattern on the board: thus some assembly required), and just enough string to be wound intricately around the nails as stated in the instructions. Once finished, you had a nice piece of art to hang on your wall.

These pieces of pop art often took many hours of intricate work and were wonderful conversation pieces. Some of the more adventuresome string art lovers designed their own patterns or deviated from the pattern in the instructions (with limited success, to my recollection). And if you weren't careful with them, a string or two would break loose and the whole work would begin to unravel. Cats, in particular, loved string art.