Textiles as the Face of Modernity: Artistry and Industry in Mid-Century America

Abstract

This article examines the rise of a new profession of textile designer-intermediary in mid-twentieth-century America in light of the nation’s advancements in textile production, design, display and promotion. Unlike William Morris’s nineteenth-century call for a return to handcrafts to combat the evils of the British Industrial Revolution, American textiles were promoted as the face of modernity to reflect and exploit the miracles of technology. Emerging from these developments came the ‘Super Designers’ and ‘Techno-Craftsmen’, as designers Jack Lenor Larsen and Boris Kroll referred to them, who united handcraft sensibilities with good design and mass production.¹ These traits were also shared by weavers such as Anni Albers, Dorothy Liebes and Marianne Strengell, and designers of printed textiles such as Alexander Girard and Alvin Lustig. Despite an increasing reliance on mechanization, their textiles provided a human element — through texture, colour, pattern and connections to the past — to foil the threat of robotic mass production and mindless monotony. Working as corporate heads, industrial consultants, cultural ambassadors and textile collectors and connoisseurs, these designers emphasized in their work and writing the value of well-designed textiles for both visual and utilitarian purposes, collectively advancing contemporary textiles as ideal representatives of modern American design.

Notes

1 J. L. Larsen, Address to the American Association for Textile Technology, 1961, Jack Lenor Larsen Papers 1941–2003, Archives of American Art, Washington DC, Box 2, p. 6; Interiors, 120, no. 12, July 1961, p. 4.

2 Editors of American Fabrics and Fashions Magazine, Encyclopedia of Textiles (Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), pp. 75–76.

3 R. L. Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), pp. 139–52; R. L. Blaszczyk, ‘Designing Synthetics, Promoting Brands: Dorothy Liebes, DuPont Fibres and Post-war American Interiors’, Journal of Design History, 21, no. 1 (2008), pp. 75–99; A. Winton, ‘None of Us is Sentimental About the Hand’, The Journal of Modern Craft, 4, no. 3 (2011), pp. 251–67. Regarding American promotions of soft power abroad, see D. Crowley and J. Pavitt, eds, Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970 (London: V&A, 2008); G. Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

4 Museum of Modern Art, press release for ‘Design for Use U.S.A.’ exhibition, 8 January 1951, no. 510104-1, p. 3. T. Riley and E. Eigen, ‘Between the Museum and the Marketplace: Selling Good Design’, in Studies in Modern Art 4: The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century: At Home and Abroad, ed. J. Szarkowski (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994) pp. 151–73; M. A. Staniszewski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).

5 E. Noyes, Organic Design in Home Furnishings (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1941).

6 Kaufmann’s Department Store Archives, Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, Boxes 3–8.

7 V. G. Troy, ‘Textiles on Display 1941–1969’, in Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm 1930 to Present, ed. A. Myzelev (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 22–38; Riley and Eigen, ‘Between the Museum and the Marketplace’, p. 155; Staniszewski, The Power of Display, p. 176.

8 Charles and Ray Eames referred to this approach as ‘functioning decoration’. P. Kirkham, ‘Humanizing Modernism: The Crafts, “Functioning Decoration” and the Eameses’, Journal of Design History, 11, no. 1 (1998), pp. 15–29; M. Obniski, ‘Selling Folk Art and Modern Design: Alexander Girard and Herman Miller’s Textiles and Objects Shop (1961–1967)’, Journal of Design History, 28, no. 3 (2015), pp. 254–62.

9 American Fabrics, no. 38 (Fall 1956).

10 American Fabrics, no. 1 (1946), p. 1.

11 American Fabrics, no. 19 (Fall 1951), p. 82; American Fabrics, no. 20 (Winter 1951), p. 124; American Fabrics, no. 36 (Spring 1956), p. 99; American Fabrics, no. 28 (Spring 1954), pp. 49–51.

12 American Fabrics, no. 27 (Winter 1953–1954), p. 88; American Fabrics, no. 32 (Spring 1955), pp. 92–95.

13 M. Perelman, Steal This Idea (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 70–71. After both world wars Western allies confiscated Germany’s patents for synthetic fibres and dyes, and also expropriated skilled civilians. L. Palombi, Gene Cartels: Biotech Patents in the Age of Free Trade (Northampton, MA: Elgar, 2009), pp. 48–49, 80. In 1919 the Chemical Foundation Corp. purchased approximately 5,000 patents, trademarks and copyrights from Germany, which at that time supplied 90% of dyes used by American industries. The 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, and the 1942 Exec. Order 9095 of the Alien Property Custodian Act, allowed seizures of patents.

14 Nylon and rayon are generic terms, similar to cotton or wool. DuPont unveiled nylon in 1938 under various trademarked blends, acrylic Orlon in 1950 and polyester Dacron in 1951; Dobeckmun/Dow, Ohio, released the plastic-coated aluminum fibre Lurex in 1946.

15 R. L. Blaszczyk, ‘Selling Synthetics: DuPont’s Marketing of Fabrics and Fashions in Postwar America’, The Business History Review, 80, no. 3 (Autumn 2006), pp. 485–528.

16 S. Handley, Nylon, The Story of a Fashion Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 53.

17 Handley, Nylon, p. 80.

18 House Beautiful, April/May 1945, p. 214; A. Girard, ‘The Herman Miller Fabric Collection’, marketing material, 1957, Herman Miller Archives, Zeeland, MI, GIT 22, p. 3.

19 G. Nelson, ‘Good Design: What is it For?’ in Problems of Design (New York: Whitney Library of Design 1957), p. 12.

20 American Fabrics, no. 16 (Winter 1950–1951), pp. 44–51.

21 American Fabrics, no. 27 (Winter 1953–1954), p. 88.

22 Around the time that textile workers were forming unions (e.g. Textile Workers Union of America, in 1939), numerous higher education programmes, for example Georgia Institute of Technology, began to expand their textile programmes to include industrial applications such as textile engineering and chemistry. See http://www.mse.gatech.edu/about/history (accessed March 25, 2019).

23 W. Hennessey, Modern Furnishings for the Home 2 (New York: Reinhold, 1956), p. 22.

24 A. Lustig, ‘Modern Printed Fabrics’, American Fabrics, no. 20 (Winter 1951), p. 66.

25 American Fabrics, no. 40 (Spring 1957), p. 62. The curtains were manufactured at Hess, Rhode Island. Manufacturers Trust, 1954, by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, 510 5th Avenue, New York City.

26 D. McFadden et al., Jack Lenor Larsen: Creator and Collector (New York: Merrell, 2004), pp. 5, 18, 40.

27 B. H. Friedman, ‘The Most Expensive Restaurant Ever Built’, Evergreen, no. 10 (1959), reprinted in no. 120, October 2009, p. 11; J. Mariani, The Four Seasons: A History of America’s Premier Restaurant (New York: Crown, 1994), pp. 32–33.

28 E. Martin, ed., Knoll Textiles (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Bard Graduate Center, 2011), p. 102. Alvin Lustig credits Arundell Clarke with this innovation in ‘Modern Printed Fabrics’, American Fabrics, no. 20 (Winter 1951), p. 72.

29 J. L. Larsen, ‘The Future of the Textile’, in Fabrics International, exhibition catalogue, American Crafts Council, 1962, p. 7, reprint of Craft Horizons, 21, no. 5 (1961).

30 For discussions of early twentieth-century American textiles and collaborations with manufacturing, see W. Leach, Land of Desire (New York: Vintage, 1993); L. Whitley, ‘MDC Crawford and American Textile Design 1916–1921’ (MA thesis, SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, 1994); M. Schoeser and W. Blausen, ‘Wellpaying Self Support: Women Textile Designers in the USA’, in Women Designers in the USA 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference, ed. P. Kirkham (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 145–65; W. Kaplan, ed., The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: Design for the Modern World 1880–1920 (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004); K. Herbaugh, ‘The Associated American Artists: Textile Art for the Masses’, in Textile Society of America Proceedings (2002), pp. 342–48; V. G. Troy, The Modernist Textile: Europe and America 1890–1940 (London: Lund Humphries, 2006). For a discussion of international encounters, see S. Weltge, Bauhaus Textiles (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), pp. 172–90; K. James-Chakraborty, ‘From Isolationism to Internationalism’, in Bauhaus Culture From Weimar to the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), pp. 165–70; B. Tigerman, ‘Fusing Old and New: Émigré Designers in California’, in California Design 1930–65: Living in a Modern Way, ed. W. Kaplan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 91–115.

31 M. Schoeser, Fabrics and Wallpapers: Twentieth-Century Design (New York: Dutton, 1986), pp. 65–66.

32 Larsen, Address to the American Association for Textile Technology, p. 6.

33 E. Rossbach, ‘Fiber in the Forties’, American Craft, 42, no. 5 (1982), pp. 15–19.

34 Lustig, ‘Modern Printed Fabrics’, p. 62.

35 Museum of Modern Art press release, 13 April 1955, no. 27, pp. 1–5.

36 V. G. Troy, ‘Weaving Diplomacy: Textiles and Hand-weaving at Home and Abroad at Midcentury’, Archives of American Art Journal, 53, nos 1 & 2 (Fall 2014), pp. 52–77.

37 M. Kreis et al., Alexander Girard, A Designer’s Universe (Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2016); V. G. Troy, Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain (London: Ashgate, 2002); J. L. Larsen, The Dyer’s Art: Ikat, Batik, Plangi (New York: Reinhold, 1976).

38 Rossbach, ‘Fiber in the Forties’, pp. 15–19.

39 B. P. Gifford and L. Edwards, ‘Feminizing Alcoa Aluminum: Marianne Strengell and the Forecast Rug (1957)’, The Journal of Modern Craft, 8, no. 2 (2015), pp. 167–79; ‘Snapshot: Dorothy Wright Liebes, First Lady of the Loom’, Interiors, no. 106, July 1947, pp. 86–91, 134–36; Rossbach, ‘Fiber in the Forties’, pp. 15–19; Winton, ‘None of Us is Sentimental About the Hand’, pp. 251–67.

40 Obniski, ‘Selling Folk Art and Modern Design’, pp. 261–62.

41 ‘Fabrics’, Everyday Art Quarterly, no. 25 (1953), p. 14.

42 Interiors, 120, no. 12, July 1961, p. 4.

43 House and Garden, 92, October 1947, pp. 49–51.

44 A Swiss machine was in production at Castle Creek Textile Co. of New Jersey by 1953. This automatic, eight-colour screen-printing machine could print on all types of fabric, in repeats up to 80 inches wide, at up to 450 yards per hour; in addition, one machine could produce what formerly took 20 workers to produce. American Fabrics, no. 27 (Winter 1953–1954), pp. 62–63.

45 The term ‘backgrounds’ was frequently used in reference to modern textiles. Marianne Strengell stated, ‘I want textiles to be backgrounds for people’, Archives of American Art Oral History, 1982, interview by R. Brown. The term was used to describe interiors at the Golden Gate Expo in 1940 (J. Lowe, ‘Background for American Life’, ArtNews, 38, 25 May 940, pp. 44–45) and interiors by Pipsan Saarinen Swanson (P. Johnson and M. Eidelberg, Design 1935–1965: What Modern Was (New York: Abrams, 1991), p. 203).

46 Girard, ‘The Herman Miller Fabric Collection’, p. 5.

47 K. Helfrich, ed., Crafting a Modern World: Antontin and Noémi Raymond (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), pp. 18–21; Martin, Knoll Textiles, p. 39.

48 Girard, ‘The Herman Miller Fabric Collection’, p. 9.

49 Martin, Knoll Textiles, p. 158; T. Minchin, Empty Mills: The Fight Against Imports and the Decline of the U.S. Textile Industry (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), pp. 38–50; American Fabrics, no. 20 (Winter 1951), p. 125.

50 A. Drexler and G. Daniel, Introduction to Twentieth Century Design from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (New York: Doubleday, 1959); E. Auther, String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

51 D. Liebes to E. B. Willis, 20 July 1966, Elizabeth Bayley Willis Archives, University of Washington Special Collection, 2583-19, Box 3, folder 17.

52 ‘Marianne Strengell: Designer-Weaver Sees Textiles as Architectural Material,’ Handweaver and Craftsman, 13, no. 4 (Fall 1962), pp. 15–16.

53 D. Blum, ‘Painting by the Yard: American Artist Designed Textiles 1947–57’, in Disentangling Textiles, ed. M. Schoeser and C. Boydell (London: Middlesex University Press, 2002), pp. 109–10; Herbaugh, ‘The Associated American Artists’, pp. 342–48.

54 Printed pattern designs discontinued by Knoll: Raymond in 1959; Strengell in 1959; and Testa in 1964; Martin, Knoll Textiles, pp. 332, 366, 383, 386.

55 Auther, String, Felt, Thread, pp. 1-46.

56 C. M. Thurman, ‘Textiles’, in Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision 1925–1950 (New York: Abrams, 1983), pp. 173–211.

57 Jack Lenor Larsen remains active as a curator and writer.

Additional information

Virginia Gardner Troy is an art historian who examines twentieth-century textiles in terms of their visual, technical and contextual significance. She is interested in twentieth-century designers who collected and admired non-Western and ancient textiles. She has authored two books, The Modernist Textile: Europe and America 1890–1940 (2006), and Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain (2002; 2016 Japanese translation by Emiko Nakano) and articles on Appalachian weaving, weaving during the Cold War, Bauhaus textiles, Marie Cuttoli and pictorial tapestry, and the textile work of Futurist artist Fortuato Depero. Dr Troy is Professor of Art History at Berry College in Georgia.