Russel Wright was one of the most important pioneers in American design, especially in his efforts to revolutionize how people live and relate to their domestic environment. As Donald Albrecht wrote in his 2001 exhibition Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle, Wright’s “inexpensive, mass produced dinnerware, furniture, appliances, and textiles were not only visually and technically...

Color was a central element in all of Verner Panton’s designs for interiors and furniture, and in particular, textiles, which became his most important vehicle for color in the futurist environments for which he is best known. Born in Denmark, Panton lived and worked most of his life in Basel, Switzerland, where by the mid-1950s...

Jorge Lizarazo is the owner and founder of Hechizoo, a textile firm based in Colombia. Lizarazo originally worked as an architect, which has influenced his textiles in terms of structural clarity and use of materials. His designs also benefit from his staff, who bring with them an expertise in the rich weaving traditions of their...

This dress, woven by Lydia Novillo in a women’s cooperative in Formosa, Argentina, illustrates the continuation of an important South American textile tradition through a contemporary lens. The tradition stems from the weaving practices of the indigenous people of South America, the Wichi, who live primarily in Formosa, an isolated area in northern Argentina. Originally settling near the Bermejo and Pilcomayo Rivers, they were semi-nomadic, agricultural people who also relied on fishing during the dry season. For centuries they have used the fibers of the chaguar, from the bromeliad family, to weave fishing nets, bags, and other objects, which continue to sustain many of the communities today.

Felt Lace X-Change was designed by Paula Verbeek-Cowart in 2008, and was woven by Oriole Mill, founded by Bethanne Knudson and Stephan Michelson in Hendersonville, North Carolina in 2006. The mill offers custom woven and designed textiles, focusing on quality, rather than quantity and speed, in the production process. They are dedicated to making the finest jacquard and dobby fabrics from natural fibers and ultimately hope to lead a resurgence of small artisanal mills in this once vibrant textile-making area of the country. One of the outcomes of opening the mill has been the formation of Studio Structure by Knudson and Pauline Verbeek-Cowart. Felt Lace X-Change reflects the mission of the mill in its craftsmanship and experimentation with natural fibers and also demonstrates Verbeek-Cowart’s interest in exploring the ways in which wool can be transformed.

In the current wallcoverings market, environmentally friendly examples are extremely limited, and papers made with toxic inks, vinyl, and other noxious elements still plague the industry. In 2006, artists Jee Levin and Randall Buck founded Trove, a New York–based company that designs and manufactures commercially rated, environmentally responsible wallcoverings.

Paper dresses of the 1960s are memorable but they are hardly innovative.  Japan has been weaving with paper since at least the sixteenth century when woven paper– called shifu in Japanese – was most likely developed by the impoverished rural population for lack of other materials. With few raw materials available, farmers originally cut the...

Ainu culture in Japan has some of the oldest continuing creative traditions in the world dating at least twelve thousand years ago.1  Textiles, and clothing design specifically, have been an important indicator of the Ainu’s ethnic identity and also their most stunning art form exemplified by this nineteenth-century attush (woven elm-bark) robe. Textile making was...

Over the last fifteen years I have been fortunate enough to visit Japan a number of times and usually with the goal of researching and finding textiles for exhibitions.  There have been many textile discoveries, but more important has been my privilege to meet the extraordinary textile makers.  These encounters with the artists and designers...

This past week has been a whirlwind of openings at the United Nations in celebration of  newly renovated chambers: the Secretariat, Economic Social Council, and today, the Trusteeship Council chamber.  Each of these rooms, originally given to the UN by Norway, Sweden, and Denmark respectively, were also renovated by these countries — a gift that keeps...

The natural world is inspiration for British textile designer, Jennifer Robertson, whose jacquard woven Silk Banksia, displays the vibrant color and luminosity of the Australian wildflower, banksia.  As the designer states: “The design is an exploration of the poetic language between silk, flora, and human sensorial experience with interior space and the natural environment.” Robertson...

There is something very seductive about mathematical models and equations.  Whether it is their complexity and conciseness, orderly arrangement of symbols and numbers on the page, or their beauty as physical structures, they reflect the problem-solving process in action. This crocheted and crennelated form, reminiscent of living coral, is a model of a mathematical structure...

Color was a central element in all of Verner Panton’s designs for interiors and furniture, and in particular, textiles, which became his most important vehicle for color in the futurist environments for which he is best known.  Born in Denmark, Panton lived and worked most of his life in Basel, Switzerland, where by the mid-1950s...

Resourcefulness has been a key component of Japanese life for centuries, and in design, one sees this most dramatically with materials and objects being repurposed, recycled, or reused.  The Japanese textile company, Nuno, founded in 1984, is constantly striving to integrate this ecological approach while continuing to create some of the most technologically innovative and...

This sumptuous red velvet with gold disks embodies what we can learn from textiles by looking, comparing, deconstructing, reconstructing, and then interpreting our observations.  Milton Sonday, my predecessor in the Textiles department at the Cooper-Hewitt, is a master of this methodology and has spent years employing it and teaching it to researchers and curators around...