innovative

SORT BY:
Stainless Steel Gloss
Stainless Steel Gloss was designed by Reiko Sudo, one of Japan’s most important contemporary textile designers. Educated at Musashino Art University, she and Junichi Arai were the co-founders in 1984 of the Japanese company and store, NUNO, which produces textiles of extraordinary ingenuity and beauty. Sudo and the other designers at NUNO combine tradition and...
Modern Pioneer
A pioneer of modern design, Ruth Reeves was at the forefront of American textiles throughout her career, perpetually interested in the discovery of a national American voice in design. After studying at Pratt and the San Francisco School of Design, Reeves traveled to Paris, where she lived between 1921 and 1927. In America, the field...
Airy Weave
Airy Weave is an excellent example of technologically innovative contemporary Japanese textiles. It is a triple layer silk fabric woven on a jacquard loom with a middle layer that has no warp, which allows the weft threads to float independently of the two outer layers. The resulting structure highlights the textile’s dimensionality and movement, as...
Slip on a Delphos
Now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, Mariano Fortuny's iconic Delphos dress utilizes a patented pleating process that has never been fully understood.
Bound but not Broken
Frank Karslake introduced the Guild of Women Binders in 1898 after meeting an influential group of female bookbinders in various parts of Britain; many of whom worked in shops under men or even from their own homes.  Karslake first became interested in these makers in 1897 when he visited the Victorian Era Exhibition at the Earl’s...
Cold Wax
The Tillett Cold Wax System was one of the techniques Jack Lenor Larsen covered in detail in his 1969 book, The Dyer’s Art. Leslie Tillett explained, “I began serious research on a screen-printable resist material about three years after arriving in this country in 1947… I was after a formula or substance that would easily...
The Effulgence of Country Gardens
Jack Lenor Larsen (b.1927) is one of America’s most prolific and innovative twentieth century textile designers. He came to prominence in the 1950s with his distinctive hand-woven casement fabrics for the commercial contract market. But he was not surprised to later become best known for his sumptuous printed fabrics like Primavera. For Larsen, it was...
A Curious Carpet
By the middle of the nineteenth century the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. British manufacturers of all kinds developed innovative techniques to produce goods for an ever-growing global consumer base. Many successful companies developed artistic sidelines that utilized their established resources in experimental ways. John Crossley & Son was one of the largest carpet...
A Textile You Probably Shouldn’t Touch
Though Mary Walker Phillips is recognized as an American fiber artist responsible for elevating the crafts of knitting and macramé to the realm of fine art, she was first and foremost, a weaver – and a wonderful one at that. This sample from 1960 appears simultaneously structurally precarious and visually charming. It is composed of...