Enid Marx, also known as ‘Marco’, was one of the early 20th century’s most prolific and prodigiously talented designers, expanding her creative vision across a huge range of disciplines. From painting and printmaking to illustration and textiles, she spread her singular vision far and wide in a career spanning over 70 years. As a textile…
Category Archives: PIONEERS
Contemporary artist Brent Wadden makes woven artworks that deftly blur the boundaries between textile and painting, proving the two disciplines aren’t so different after all. Stretched over canvas and hung on gallery walls, his boldly geometric textiles might first appear to be abstract paintings, but closer inspection reveals they are tightly woven by hand, lending…
New York based textile designer and artist Caroline Kaufman takes a free-wheeling, experimental approach to creating textiles, working in an improvisatory way to produce surprising and unexpected results. She is perhaps best known for her recent, wildly complex tufted textiles, which play with madcap colour schemes and zany patterns to produce functional rugs that look…
“No artistic success has given me such satisfaction as the sight of a peasant or a worker buying a length of material designed by me.” Liubov Popova Russian Constructivist Liubov Popova was a force of nature, expanding her creative ideas across painting, theatre set design and textiles. But many would say the bold, graphic power…
San Francisco based fibre artist Josh Faught makes visceral, tactile artworks that weave together multiple references: craft, sexuality, gender and queer politics. Working with weaving, knitting and crochet, his widely varied practice is almost always sculptural, whether hung onto the wall or strewn across wooden supports. While embracing traditional craft techniques, Faught also pushes his…
Playful, whimsical and naïve, the textile designs of Jacqueline Groag lit up postwar Britain, injecting homes, interiors and clothing with a renewed sense of vitality and optimism. Originally from Prague, Groag was the leading textile designer of the United Kingdom throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, showcasing a vibrant new approach to textile design that…
In amongst the wild forests and fjords near the Nordic town of Rissa lies a small, hidden community: the Fosen Folk School. Part of Norway’s wider ‘folk high school’ pedagogy, the school takes an alternative approach to education, focussing on the development of practical, handcrafted skills for life rather than tests and grades. From tiny…
Bauhaus textile artist and weaver Otti Berger was one of the greatest innovators of her generation, producing a dazzling array of complex and intricate fabrics that have inspired generations since. During her time as a student and later a teacher with the legendary German Bauhaus school she was endlessly inventive, experimenting wildly with weaving methods…
A self-proclaimed ‘late developer,’ fibre artist Claire Zeisler hit her stride during the early 1960s when she was nearly 60 years old, taking the United States art world by storm. Along with her contemporaries Lenore Tawney and Sheila Hicks, Zeisler became an outspoken, radical pioneer in the Fibre Art movement, taking the historical tradition of…
Last summer, I had the incredible opportunity to take part in a weaving workshop, taught by Deborah Livingston-Lowe, of Upper Canada Weaving – a kind-hearted, and passionate weaver. This was my very first experience weaving. After my initial pass through the loom, I was hooked! My two times great-grandfather worked as a ‘tenter’ in Scotland….
American artist Sanford Biggers has an incredibly diverse and eclectic practice encompassing a vast range of media, including film/video, sculpture, installation, music and performance. But his eclectic textile art is one of the most celebrated aspects of his oeuvre, in which he stitches together a vast array of fabric swatches into brilliantly bright, daringly experimental…
American textile artist Ethel Stein merged historical weaving techniques with dazzling geometric designs influenced by the Bauhaus School in a career spanning more than six decades. Throughout this time, she demonstrated a remarkable ability to weave simple, elegant designs that balance ordered geometry with off-kilter, destabilized elements of chaos. Little wonder then, that her art…
German textile artist Gunta Stölzl was a remarkable early 20th century weaver with an innate sensibility for the sensuous, tactile qualities of weaving. Her fantastically complex designs are a true feast for the eyes, and even today appear remarkably fresh, with their dizzying geometric patterns, shapes and colours that seem to buzz and hum with…
Known today as the “mother of modern weaving,” Dorothy Liebes had a monumental impact on textile design. She sparked a new wave of fabric production with her unconventional materials, unusual textures and boldly imaginative motifs. During her lifetime she became one of most successful and influential designers of the entire 20th century, with an incredible…
One of India’s most gifted artists, Mrinalini Mukherjee tracked new and unchartered territory with her painstakingly intricate and monumentally scaled woven sculptures, that could each take her up to a year to complete. Working with dyed natural fibres including jute and rope, she created anthropomorphic structures resembling biomorphic forms, each one invested with its own…
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