Description
The Weaving Workshop was the only domain for women artists at the Bauhaus (the German school of design that operated from 1919 through 1933). The text tells about the women of the workshop and the context of their work and art, the progression of the school and its edicts, the changes wrought by the mechanized loom and mass production, and the legacy of the Bauhaus. The 200 photographs feature textile designs that were so far ahead of their time that many appear contemporary. This is an important book for its detailing of the school, the times, women artists, and the Workshop, considered to be the preeminent design phenomenon of the 20th century. 9x11.5" Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
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Resurrecting the work of gifted craftswomen, too long denied their place as pioneers in their field, Women's Work: Textile Art from the Bauhaus unearths a missing chapter in the story of the most important institution in the history of modern design.The Bauhaus defined modern design in the twentieth century. As the preeminent design phenomenon of the era, almost every aspect of it has been minutely examined. Yet the Weaving Workshop, the longest standing and most successful of all Bauhaus workshops, has been neglected for one simple reason: when the first wave of brilliantly talented women arrived at the school, they soon discovered that Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius could not sustain his ringing declaration of equality between "the beautiful and the strong gender." Textiles, in the hierarchy of art and design, were to be "women's work."Their results, however, were remarkable, both in the early days of artistic expression in Weimar and in later developments in the textile industry. The craftswomen responded to the demands of advanced technology with fabrics that incorporated new or unusual materials such as Cellophane, leather and early synthetics, which had acoustic and light-reflecting properties. They produced multi-layered fabrics, cloths with double and triple weaves, and later made extensive use of the jacquard loom. The result was a rebirth of hand-weaving and new professionalism in designing textiles for mass production.In this model study, superlatively documented with rare or little-seen photographs of the textiles and their makers, Sigrid Wortmann Weltge captures the heady atmosphere of creative excitement at the Bauhaus. Original archival research and interviews, both with survivors and their students and with leading contemporary designers, detail the workshop's history and its enduring legacy. When the Nazis closed the institution in 1933, its members dispersed to Switzerland, Holland, England, France, Russia, Mexico, and throughout the United States; their ideals and influence live on in marvelous fabrics still being produced today.
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