“Concorde, Windsor Castle, Coventry Cathedral… in postwar Britain, these textiles were everywhere,” says Sam Reich as we pore over books of furnishing fabrics designed by his late grandfather, Tibor Reich. The densely woven swatches, some abstract, others geometric, in monochrome or brilliant blues and fuchsias, brought the palette and texture of couture fashion to upholstery, establishing the Hungarian Jewish émigré as one of the leading textile designers of the 20th century.

The son of an affluent Jewish textile manufacturer, Tibor fled the Nazis for Britain in 1936 and studied textiles at Leeds. After a spell working at the manufacturer Tootal, he set up on his own, in a business that made fabrics for Molyneux and Hardy Amies, until high taxes on couture imposed in the 40s prompted the shift to upholstery. “It was his links with fashion design that make Tibor’s designs so distinctive,” Sam says. The deep textures, woven from “fancy yarns” such as gimps (mixed with wire) or bouclé are shot through with vibrant colours inspired by the folk art of his native Hungary.

Sam Reich in the sitting room. Photograph: Rachael Smith

At the height of “Tibor-fication”, he was designing fabrics for embassies, hotels and 10 Downing Street. Concorde basked in violet and orange upholstery; Cunard cabins were lined in his daring Zebra print. One of his earliest patrons was Princess Elizabeth – his design was presented as a wedding gift for the future Queen by the Woolgrowers of the British Commonwealth in 1947. But his real legacy is the way his work – alongside that of Lucienne Day and Mary White – introduced colour to the typical British house. A 1954 exhibition of his work toured the UK and was seen by 250,000 people.

“His use of colour and weave was hailed as revolutionary,” Sam says, showing me the bestselling Royal Coral, a screen-printed, cotton boucle pinpricked with hallmark Lurex. “No one makes textiles like this now.”

This was a home, a showroom and a laboratory for ideas. Tibor was clever, inquisitive, sometimes wacky. Sam Reich

The original fabrics were woven at Clifford Mill near Stratford-upon-Avon, close to the family home which his grandfather designed in 1956. Now lived in by Sam’s parents Sarah and Alex (the latter is the youngest of Tibor’s four children), it is where Sam meets me. Derided by conservatives of the day as “monstrous”, the house still feels like a modernist surprise. Behind the weatherboarded facade – a nod to Stratford’s Elizabethan architecture – picture windows illuminate the double-height living space. Tibor’s bulbous log burner, christened the Flaming Onion, has been restored. There is furniture by Ernest Race and Robert Heritage. An open-tread staircase floats up to bedrooms that still have their original G Plan suites and internal windows. Tibor’s collections of model cars, books and Hungarian folk art sit alongside his “experiments”: tiles, decorative glass panels and the monochrome pottery he designed for Denby.

“This was a home, a showroom and a laboratory for ideas. It’s where you get a real sense of the man: clever, inquisitive, sometimes wacky,” Sam says. Tibor’s offspring slept in tiny cabins screened by sliding doors. There was an indoor garden on a deep window ledge, and a revolving cupboard for milk bottle deliveries; refrigerated filing cabinets in the kitchen reflected his love of “order and systems”.

Some of the monochrome pottery Tibor Reich designed for Denby. Photograph: Rachael Smith

Tibor ran the business with his Glaswegian-Russian wife Freda. “She was a fabulous, no-nonsense schmoozer… Together they made a cosmopolitan couple, part of an influential clan of émigrés determined to shake up a fusty, postwar Britain,” Sam enthuses. A former concert pianist,

Freda was a skilled communicator and the double curtain track in the sitting room was designed to showcase new collections to the “coachloads” of press who were greeted with wine and goulash.

Sam’s genial, bow tie-wearing grandfather gazes out from a portrait. Sam was five when Tibor died but he has absorbed his legacy from his vast archive: “He was always recording his ideas, filling notebooks and journals with writings, doodles and drawings.” He could have given his archive to a museum, but Sam believes he clearly wanted it to be commercial again.

From tape recordings, Sam has learned to appreciate his grandfather’s business acumen: “He was a brilliant self-publicist who could win new contracts just by producing a wonderful drawing.”

Once described by an art critic as a “scientist of design”, Tibor took out endless patents and invented a prototype felt-tip pen, as well as devising a way of manipulating the photos taken on his Rolleiflex into abstract designs that, like an early version of Photoshop, could be applied to any surface: glass, tiles, textiles or flooring. At the Tibor house, the concrete paving is imprinted with four fish representing the Reich brood.

Curtain in Raw Coral fabric with a California-covered chair in the foreground. Photograph: Rachael Smith

His grandfather, Sam says, “always believed that to succeed in industry, you had to do something new”. But eventually, unable to compete with cheaper copies, the business closed in the 70s. Fortunately for Sam, Tibor didn’t sell the company name, which has enabled his grandson to relaunch the designs. The 27-year-old spent a year researching the techniques behind these labour-intensive textiles. There are now 27 weaves in the collection, which he sells to designers and bespoke furniture makers. One of the challenges Sam faced was finding suppliers able to replicate the feel of the originals, which is based in part on looms running at slower speeds than usual. “I travelled the country talking to every single manufacturer. It’s a bit of an old boy network. I discovered some brilliant, innovative companies.”

This is not his first business. At Bristol, where he read history, Sam Reich started a company that converted CD collections to MP3 (clients included TV host Jonathan Ross and artist Chris Ofili), using profits to support his studies. He relaunched Tibor Ltd with a government loan. “We could have licensed the name but that would have diluted the brand. I wanted to do something with longevity: we design fabrics to last generations.”

Like his grandfather, Sam is involved in every stage of production: “In this business, you have to be neurotic about detail.” There is a small workshop in London (“atelier is too pretentious”) where he employs two Central Saint Martins-trained weavers for bespoke commissions: fabric, rugs or tapestries. “Tibor believed that upholstery should be like fashion: fast-paced and forward-thinking. Our clients can have almost any colour or variation of weave they want.” Now, as before, the possibilities for “Tibor-fication” are endless.