LIFE magazine deemed him as a “dressmaker in silver” in 1939, but Tommi Parzinger was an incredibly versatile designer, celebrated for his furniture, wallpaper, packaging and textiles.[1] Parzinger designed furnishings for socialites, decorators, and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and the Rockefellers and he established himself as a man about town in the glamorous circles of...
At first glance, this design drawing for the tapestry Our Mountains by Trude Guermonprez (American, b. Germany, 1910–1976) may appear to be a simple mountain landscape. A closer look reveals that the cool blue-green peaks and valleys are actually formed by three reclining faces in profile. In the background, the face of Guermonprez’s husband John...
What is the importance of being able to place a name upon the things we create? Perhaps it gives one the ability to become more than just a faceless member of a crowd, to leave behind a mark of what they have made. Historically, women have often remained nameless with the things they create. This is...
A cob of dizzyingly technicolored corn shoots to the top of Felice Rix-Ueno’s textile design Feldfruchte: Steel with Indigo and Brown. Sheaves of wheat and grains float around the bright maize. As summer draws to a close, few foods resonate more than corn, sweet and sun-ripened in the hazy days of August. Rix-Ueno’s title draws...
In the aftermath of World War II, a number of textile producers attempted to revitalize the industry by enlisting recognized personalities in art and architecture to design screen prints. “Perhaps the most outstanding name collection is Stimulus Fabrics produced by Schiffer Prints,” Alvin Lustig wrote in American Fabrics Magazine in 1951. “There was not a...
Two breakthrough Finnish designers from Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial discuss their explorations of design, memory, and making with Triennial curator Andrea Lipps. Tuomas Markunpoika made his piece Engineering Temporality to honor his grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He welded steel rings over a traditional wooden cabinet and then burned away the wood, leaving behind...
Junichi Arai is one of the world’s foremost innovators in textile design. He was born in Kiryu, Japan, an important center for textile production with over 1,000 years of silk-making tradition. As the sixth generation of a mill-owning family, Arai learned at an early age the customary Japanese weaving techniques for obis and kimonos. However,...
Hans Krondahl is an important Swedish textile designer and fiber artist of the 1960s and 70s. Krondahl graduated from the National College of Art, Craft and Design in Stockholm in 1959. He opened his own studio in 1962, designing both large-scale tapestries for public environments as well as designs for industrially printed textiles. He was...
Often called “England’s Eamses,” Robin and Lucienne Day were a designing couple utterly committed to modernism. The unexpectedness and vitality of their postwar interior furnishings, particularly Lucienne’s pattern designs for textiles, carpets, wallcoverings, and dishware, shaped the look of modern England in the 1950s. Lucienne is rightfully famous for Calyx, the organic design inspired by the work...
