Now in her 93rd year, Colombian contemporary fibre artist Olga de Amaral makes woven textile art that is reliant on a slow, structured approach, one that results in striking, monumental woven wall hangings and installations that are deeply embedded with exquisite craftsmanship. Yet she also relies on spontaneity and intuition, choosing to forgo pre-planned ideas…
All posts by Rosie Lesso
The airy, breezy shade of LIGHT BLUE fabric made its way into many of Claude Monet’s most celebrated paintings, describing the soaring, luminescent skies of spring and summer in his native France. In particular, the colour came to play a key role in Monet’s famed ‘Poplars’ series, made from spring to autumn 1891. In total…
Innovation was at the heart of Ruth Adler Schnee’s design practice, which encompassed radical, modernist building interiors and woven textiles throughout the mid-century modernist era. After fleeing to the United States in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime, she went on to forge a monumentally successful career at a time when opportunities for women and…
American contemporary artist Janet Echelman makes vast, diaphanous sculptures that mimic the flowing patterns of nature, resembling air, water, wind and light. Made from colossal nets and strands of rope, her awe-inspiring aerial constructions merge aspects of fibre art with architecture, landscaping, and engineering, a fusion that has allowed her to entirely transform a vast…
Frances Featherstone’s indulgent and richly decorative paintings convey individuals caught in quiet moments of domestic bliss, gazing out of the window, lounging on the sofa, or (most commonly) curled up in bed under layer upon layer of plush, vividly patterned fabric. Looking down on these duvet dwellers from above, she captures them seemingly unaware, lost…
The American-Japanese sculptor, furniture designer and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi was one of the most singular and ambitious voices of the 20th century. Throughout his long and prolific career, Noguchi produced gardens, playgrounds, sculptures and monumental public art, along with furniture and architecture, which merged Japanese and American visual culture, and became part of his…
From psychedelic swirls to towering fragments of brutalist architecture, the pioneering textiles of British designer Barbara Brown encapsulated the spirit of the 1960s space age. Looking to the future of design, she took inspiration from – as she put it – “machines and architecture”, to create visually striking patterns featuring vivid colours and dizzying optical…
Textile designer and artist Althea McNish holds a significant place in history, as the first designer of African-Caribbean descent to find international success. Her lively, exuberant textiles were a breath of fresh air in postwar 1950s Britain, injecting the cultural landscape with great swathes of lush, tropical colour. Turner found the inspiration for her fertile…
20th century British artist Henry Moore’s monumental sculpture is widely known and celebrated across the world, but perhaps less well studied is his intriguing relationship with textiles. During the 1940s and 1950s, Moore produced a body of textile designs, which open up a new understanding of his visual language, and his way of seeing and…
The English late 19th and early 20th century designer Charles Francis Annesley (CFA) Voysey made a remarkable contribution to British design, through architecture, furniture design, wallpaper, textiles, and more. During his lifetime, he earned a widespread reputation as a leading light in the Arts and Crafts movement. Much like his contemporary William Morris, Voysey believed…
Whether abstract, figurative, or somewhere in between, the epic, shimmering and painterly fabric installations made by African-born artist Abdoulaye Konaté reflect on Africa’s great history with textiles, and the political implications bound into every single stitched layer. Currently living and working in Bamako, he says, “My works witness and speak of power struggles which have…
Japanese fashion designer and powerhouse Issey Miyake cared deeply about the relationship between clothing and the living, breathing bodies that inhabited them. He designed clothes that were meant to be worn, believing they were only truly complete once they had been integrated into the lives of their wearers. Yet there was nothing ordinary or basic…
Frank Lloyd Wright might be best known as one of most revered American architects of entire 20th century – he pioneered the Prairie Style, along with ‘organic architecture’ designed in harmony with nature, and cutting-edge icons including New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. But perhaps less well known is his brief foray into textile and wallpaper…
In the hands of contemporary artist Faig Ahmed, traditional Azerbaijani rugs are given a fantastically surreal twist, with elements that seem to warp, melt, and dissolve into puddles on the gallery floor. An intricate fusion of high quality, traditional weaving techniques and digital design, his visually arresting artworks speak of a need to keep ancient…
The renowned Parisian, inter-war fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet earned the moniker of “architect of couture” amongst her peers during her lifetime, for her innately structural approach to clothing. Her garments were constructed using the diagonal bias cut as a prominent feature, along with Grecian-style drapery, to create the most striking, theatrical visual impact. Much like…
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