Author: Kimberly Randall

SORT BY:
A number of pink flowers with green, spiky stems and leaves dance on an untreated, cream-colored paper.
Florals by Sophia
Sophia Crownfield's delicate floral drawings informed her range of patented wallcoverings and textiles for a variety of manufacturers.
Read Time
5 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
July 13, 2022
Image of a magazine page of the start of an article on Marion Dorn, featuring a block of text and five colorful images depicting textile designs.
Marion Dorn, Back in the USA
American designers Marion V. Dorn and E. McKnight Kauffer returned to New York in 1940 after a long, productive period working abroad in England. Their retreat, spurred by World War II, was a hasty one. Dorn, the more resilient of the pair, spent much of the 1940s re-establishing her career, even briefly designing scarves for...
Read Time
4 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
March 17, 2022
Printed fabric has a design of wheat sheaves in black against a background of orange and yellow.
The Glow of Althea McNish
Althea McNish (1924–2020) was one of the first Black women designers to receive international recognition for her achievements in design. Her textile Golden Harvest marks the beginning of a remarkable career for an under-recognized pioneer of 20th-century textile design.
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
February 22, 2022
Vertically rectangular batik hanging of a landscape with a tent and a column in the middle ground, surrounded by cedar trees. Low plants and a spider web fill the foreground. The night sky has stars and billowing clouds. A floral vine border on all sides with rabbits in bottom section. Gray, green, apricot, yellow, and white.
Camp in Connecticut
Designers can find inspiration from varying forms of creative expression. Looking at the batik murals of the American artist and designer Lydia Bush-Brown (1887–1984), her sources seemed clear. Sketches capturing scenes from her travel in the 1920s to Syria and Italy can be found repeatedly in her work. Murals featuring Syrian villages on terraced hills,...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
March 30, 2021
Image features: Columns of irregularly spaced stripes, each stripe alternating rectangles of black and white with rectangles of bright orange and pink. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
A New Way With Color
In celebration of National Design Month, October’s Object of the Week posts honor past National Design Award winners. In 2011, Knoll won a National Design Award for Corporate and Institutional Achievement. The company, known for fostering many talented international designers over the decades, is represented by more than 170 objects in Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection.  ...
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
October 19, 2020
Image features: Three white-on-white patterned textiles sewn together, each having four selvages. The two outer textiles are patterned with stripes of geometric shapes including a bird. The center is patterned with zigzag bands, one above the other, to form an elongated diamond shape. Head opening is uncut. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this image.
Translucent Cloth
September is New York Textile Month, a citywide celebration of textile creativity. As in past years, the museum is collaborating with the Textile Society of America. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide....
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
September 28, 2020
Image features: Black headcovering made from stretchy mesh fabric. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this image.
A Modest Achievement
September is New York Textile Month, a citywide celebration of textile creativity. As in past years, the museum is collaborating with the Textile Society of America. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide....
Read Time
2 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
September 21, 2020
Image features: Large wrapping cloth made from sheets of paper from account ledgers, glued together and stained with persimmon, giving a brownish color except where later patched with lighter colored papers. Writing still evident on sheets. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object
Only Seeing 
September is New York Textile Month, a citywide celebration of textile creativity. As in past years, the museum is collaborating with the Textile Society of America. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide....
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
September 14, 2020
Image features: Samples of yarns dyed by members of the Society, affixed to the backs of admission tickets to the Annual Exhibition of 1908. Recipes for some colors are written below. Please scroll down to read the blog post about this object.
Preserving Knowledge, Preserving Color
September is New York Textile Month, a citywide celebration of textile creativity. As in past years, the museum is collaborating with the Textile Society of America. A non-profit professional organization of scholars, educators, and artists in the field of textiles, TSA provides an international forum for the exchange and dissemination of information about textiles worldwide....
Read Time
3 minutes
Posted By
Kimberly Randall
Date
September 7, 2020