Russian Embroidery

Russian embroidery was probably used in roughly equal proportions for both domestic use and for clothing. It is difficult to see a definite framework for style and pattern as there are so many regional variations within a country the size and cultural complexity of Russia, but there are some general cultural identifiers within the embroidery craft of the country.

For example, Russian embroidery was often of one definite colour set against a natural background. Therefore a great deal of stitch work was produced using red silk on a natural linen background. This gave embroidery pattern work a very clear and precise aspect, with particular motifs being seen as definite and distinct as opposed to some other forms of embroidery where compositions can be somewhat vague and less defined.

Many of the symbols used as motifs and all-over pattern work, derive their origin from a number of different cultural influences within the history of Russia. One important element is that of the church which has left a legacy within embroidery design of the equal sided cross which can be seen as both a central motif or as an integrated pattern. However, a number of symbols, many of which have lost their true meaning, are believed to have originated within the early pre-Christian culture of the Slavs and possibly even before that era, even into the Palaeolithic.

Embroidery in Russia was usually produced by women, though men were known to have produced a certain amount of the work, usually when embroidery was used to decorate leather particularly for boots. It was very much an amateur affair which is consistent with the embroidery craft in many cultures.

Much of the Russian embroidery pattern work uses an abstract format incorporating bands, closed frameworks and all-over design work, but there is also an element of representational work that includes various aspects of local and more exotic flora and fauna, ranging from representations of pomegranates to that of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. However, it is the abstract and semi-abstract geometrical pattern work that seems to be at the heart of much of the embroidery produced, at least in the central area of Russia, and it this dependence on non-representational pattern work that has produced such a breadth of variety and innovation within the craft.

All of the images shown in this article were part of the Soviet Unions contribution towards the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts that was held in Paris in 1925.

There is one more article in this series of embroidery examples taken from the Soviet Unions 1925 Paris Exhibition of diverse crafts of the Union, that article will deal with the embroidery pattern work and traditions of Northern Russia and will appear on The Textile Blog next week.

Nelda Warkentin and the Balance and Rhythm of Nature

Nelda Warkentin Summer Light

Nelda Warkentin's textile artwork can be said to have at its root, the acute observation of nature. This observation however, is not limited to the scientific and objective analysis of nature, but has much more to do with recognising the balance, symmetry and rhythm that is a fundamental part of the natural world.

Warkentin lives and works in Alaska where you can imagine that nature is writ large, but she also travels fairly extensively and is able to appreciate the natural world in its many guises, which is then incorporated into her work. She is naturally aware of interesting elements of line, pattern and colour from a blade of grass to the surface texture of an ocean.

 Nelda Warkentin Palms Swaying, Whales Breaching

Warkentin's style can be seen on a number of levels. Her appreciation of the natural world is obvious and can be immediately seen throughout most of her work. However, underlying this appreciation lie a number of other observations, and they have much more to do with the interaction of all living elements on the planet including the human one. The world we have created seems at first glance to be artificial and bears little resemblance to that of the natural world, but we are all part of the complex procedure that is the make up of all flora and fauna of the planet. Warkentin builds up her work in layers, gaining her inspiration from traditional quilt work. She uses the layering as a metaphor for the complex pattern that is the sum of each individual creature, whether that be a palm frond, a flying bird, or indeed the multi-levelled personality of a human, but it also draws attention to the layers that can be seen within groups of individuals such as a flock of birds, a shoal of fish or a human community, where individuals are part of a larger whole.  

Nelda Warkentin Early Spring, East Hill

While the layering strategy is somewhat subtle and perhaps not immediately noticeable to the naked eye, what is more immediate about Warkentin's work is the obvious juxtaposition of the curve and the straight line. This is another analogy that she draws between the natural and hand produced world represented by the curve, and the contrasting geometrically imposed straight line of the human world of streets and buildings that is so much a part of who we are.

Above all there is an element in the work of Warkentin that our natural sense of rhythm and balanced symmetry appreciates. Her work is made up of smaller parts, each being unique, but still similar enough to the other parts surrounding it to give us a well balanced and harmonious final work. It is this feeling of harmony that allows us to fully appreciate the complex rhythm and pattern of nature.

Nelda Warkentin Glacier Rendevous 2

Nelda Warkentin's work can be regularly seen across the US as well as worldwide from Japan to South Africa. She has a comprehensive website where more examples of her work can be seen and information about her life as an artist. Her website can be found here.

All images were used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference:

Nelda Warkentin website

Nelda Warkentin Spring Swing

William Morris and the Oriental Carpet

William Morris The Redcar carpet c1880

While William Morris and his company Morris & Co had a very definite and somewhat individual approach to the decorative arts, influences did come from a number of avenues, not all of them were from the English decorative past and not all of them were given the credit that perhaps they should have been.

Morris himself was more than aware and indeed happy to declare that he was influenced by what he saw as the best that the past could offer. However, 'the past' as far as Morris was concerned, often had a very narrow English definition. As far as carpet and rug design was concerned, the best was definitely not from the English past. There is very little in the way of any real historical tradition of carpet and rug design in England. Much of the high status floor coverings were imported from Persia and Turkey, with lower status domestic interiors having to make do with basic and rudimentary coverings, if at all.

William Morris The Redcar carpet design (detail) c1880

It was this tradition of the importation of carpets and rugs from the Middle East that Morris was keen to tap into. The English, even in the nineteenth century had certain expectations of what a floor carpet should be. Much of those pre-conceptions came from the traditional carpet design work of the Middle East and Central Asia. Many saw the standard carpet design as containing a central medallion, some interlaced pattern work, which was then all surrounded by a thick and sometimes heavy border. This formula was followed fairly closely by most of the English carpet manufacturers.

Morris himself rarely strayed from this same formula, though he did inject a fair proportion of his own take on traditional English design work within the traditions of the oriental carpet, changing some of the foliage and floral work to those that were intrinsically English, rather than those of foreign tradition. It is interesting to note how coy Morris was about influences that he considered not to be English. There was a definite level of reluctance on his part to name cultures and regions outside of his self-created Medieval English fantasy. While other Victorian designers saw useful and interesting traditions from Japan, China and India for example, many of which they felt could be incorporated into contemporary English decorative art, Morris was always critical and sat in opposition of what he saw as fads of fashion. To some extent he was right. However, there was also a legitimate purpose in expanding a designer's influences and ideas which added to the depth and complexity of any design work. Limiting an influence to one Medieval ideal with no other form of input, was bound to be both constricting and would inevitably lead to a lack of originality and dynamism when the ideal had run its course.

One of the best known of Morris carpets is The Redcar produced in about 1880. All of the images shown in this article, bar one, show various views of The Redcar carpet. The one image that does not shows instead an example of a Persian carpet from the area of Heriz near Tabriz.

 Traditional silk Heriz carpet design

This in no way implies that Morris copied the design work of traditional Persian, Turkish or any other area of carpet and rug weaving. What it does imply is that Morris was always aware of the constraints of English taste and was equally aware of their narrow parameters as far as new innovations within the decorative arts were concerned. Morris may well be seen in some quarters as a revolutionary designer, but it would be perhaps more prudent to see him as working his revolution within the realms of an English framework. His carpet design work never really strayed from the English estimation of what a floor carpet should be, and while he may well have produced pieces that are definitely identifiable as 'Morris', they were still well within the fairly narrow parameters of English expectations of the decorative arts.

Whereas some English and Scottish designers such as C F A Voysey and B J Talbert, as well as many of the more strident European carpet and rug designers of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s produced design work that did not necessarily follow the traditions of the Middle East and Central Asia, some even breaking out of the constraints of that tradition entirely, Morris never really went that far and so his carpet designs could be seen as a perfect example of a designer working within the accepted levels of English taste, rather than working around them.

William Morris The Redcar carpet design (detail) c1880

The Later Textile Design Work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Orange and Purple Spirals textile design

Charles Rennie Mackintosh will probably always be associated with the Art Nouveau rose motif that he used on a number of occasions within the textile and interior decoration framework. However, there is much more to his design work than a stylised rose. This can be seen particularly within his later textile design work, much of which was produced between the years of the First World War and just after.

Mackintosh was never truly a paid up member of any real decorative movement. It is generally part of the Scottish psyche to be both self-sufficient and independently minded and to avoid having that independence being subsumed within groups or movements, and although there are definite similarities between the work of  Mackintosh and aspects of the Wiener Werkstatte, there is still much debate about who influenced whom and by how much, and while it is true to say that there was a certain amount of trade off on both sides of the relationship between Glasgow and Vienna, it is still very much part of the personal makeup of the character of  Mackintosh, to identify him as a loner as far as early twentieth century decorative arts are concerned.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Stylised Petals and Teardrops textile design

Although, as I said earlier, the rose motif has been strongly identified as the moniker of Mackintosh, it is the later work as shown in the illustrations for this article, that clearly show where the true individual genius of the man and the designer really lay. These textile design ideas although still mostly based on floral motifs and pattern work, had clearly left behind any interest or influence made by the Art Nouveau movement, and although many see the First World War as the end of this movement, much of it was still intact at the end of the war and was to be found transforming itself into the early Art Deco movement of the 1920s.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Wave Pattern textile design

The abstract spirals, windmills and wave patterns that Mackintosh produced as part of the design work shown in these later textile examples, have a certain amount in common with elements of the Omega Workshops and the later design work of Sonia Delaunay for example, but much of the work it has to be said is very much an intrinsic part of Mackintosh's own individual approach to decoration. This is the work of an experienced confident and comfortable designer, one who knew through experience the beauty that could be achieved through the balance of colour tones, line and composition. A designer that was indeed becoming increasingly aware of, and familiar with, fairly complex even revolutionary contemporary issues and solutions regarding abstraction. The fact that most of these solutions were worked out by Mackintosh mostly in isolation, says much more about the man as a designer and artist than any rose motif could ever do.

It is a shame that Mackintosh did not receive the obvious recognition for this later work that was his due, but then to be honest he received pitifully little recognition for most of his career and died in 1928 largely forgotten and unmourned by both Scotland and England. It is also a shame that Mackintosh has become more or less exclusively identified with only one particular motif style produced by Mackintosh, any trip to Glasgow will show you the percentage of items sold using the rose motif far outweighs anything else produced by the designer. It is a regrettable but familiar story within the decorative arts, but to be remembered at all has to be a plus, and the posthumous career of Charles Rennie Mackintosh has seen such a spectacular rise to prominence that the use of the rose motif as his personal avatar can perhaps be forgiven, but only just.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Waves textile design

Ukrainian Embroidery

Embroidery has always been an important element of Ukrainian textile crafts. There is no simple one uniform style that can be seen as instantly apparent as 'Ukrainian' embroidery, and this has always been seen as both its attraction and strength. Practically all areas of the Ukraine have separate and regional differences in design work, colour use, types of stitchwork and numerous combinations of those elements.

Embroidery has a long history in the Ukraine, with archaeological evidence going back to at least two thousand years, though the actual development of embroidery in the area seems to go much further back in time.

An important and probably dominant aspect of embroidery was clothing and costume. Although there was an element of usage domestically and within the church, most Ukrainian embroidery design work was used within national costumes and wedding ceremonies, usually for both men and women.

Much, if not all of the work, despite its use by both sexes, was produced by women, usually made by and for family members on an amateur and wide scale basis until at least the nineteenth century when embroidery began to be seen as a skilled craft though the amateur contribution was still a significant element even into the twentieth century.

Much of the design work, like embroidery in other areas and regions of the world, is very much floral based, though there is a large abstract and geometrical element in the work as well. There is also room for elements of realism, topicality and a reflection of the surrounding contemporary world, as can be seen in  the first illustration shown in this article, where a car can be seen travelling along a city road.

All the pieces of Ukrainian embroidery shown in this article were exhibited by the Soviet Union at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. They were part of a large showing of embroidery skills from across the Union, with the work from the Ukraine making up a significant portion of the exhibition.

Embroidery is still very much a part of the national identity of the Ukraine with many women both in the Ukraine and the larger world community that now makes up the Ukrainian population, still producing embroidered work, and while some of the regional variation may have been lost, the overall health of Ukrainian embroidery skills is still very good, much better in fact than some other areas of the world where traditional embroidery skills are having to fight a long battle in order to survive.

There are various websites across the Internet that deal with many aspects of Ukrainian embroidery, past and present. A few sites that might be useful to anyone with an interest in Ukrainian embroidery are as follows: The Ukrainian Museum which although US based, does have a wealth of information dealing with the Ukraine and the larger Ukrainian population, particularly in the US. They have an embroidery page which can be found here. Another site is Ukrainian Embroidery Patterns which gives detailed diagrams of various designs that they have kindly made available for any interested embroiderer. The site can be found here. The last site is that maintained by the Welcome to Ukraine magazine. They have an article highlighting four of the best Ukrainian embroiderers. The site can be found here.

Reference:

Ukrainian Museum Archives
Ukrainian Embroidery Patterns
Welcome to Ukraine

The Free Flowing Work of Peggy Brown

 Peggy Brown December Ice

Peggy Brown approaches textile art from the perspective of a watercolour artist.  She produces fine art painting on both paper and fabric and is able to drift between the two mediums without the usual barriers that are often thrown up between textile and fine art painting.

As far as textiles are concerned, Brown applies watercolour paint on to white fabric and then builds up layers of intensity of colour and texture as the mood takes her. These painted fabric pieces are then used within a built up collage composition. She also regularly uses paper within the composition as well as fabric, paper giving a different textural quality to that of the fabric.

 Peggy Brown Another Form

Interestingly Brown uses the organic and free flowing quality of the water colour paint to emphasise that very fact, that water is both free and fluid in its seemingly random journey across both fabric and paper. However, she also manages to give this free flowing quality an element of containment. All the pieces shown in this article have at least one area of the composition, sometimes the majority and sometimes a small fraction that features an angular bordered off area. In the piece entitled Echoes for example, it is difficult to judge whether that free flowing element of the water colour medium, is flowing into the ordered geometric area in order to obliterate it, or in fact retreating in order to make room for a very different element.

 Peggy Brown Echoes

The free form coming up hard against the contained is an interesting and clever concept. To use both the image of the free and seemingly independent organic flow of a natural element like water and the obvious constraints brought about by the use of a human right angle throws up some interesting questions and observations about the world we inhabit. It is this uneasy juxtaposition that now seems to dominate how we see the planet, but is also part of the complexity of our relationship with nature. It is inevitably up to the individual as to how this unlikely relationship between the organic and the artificial construct is interpreted.

 Peggy Brown Collaboration II

By balancing the allure between both the independence that is summed up in the element of free flowing water and the security that can be obtained from self containment, Brown has produced work that reflects who we are, who we want to be, and perhaps who we will never be.

Peggy Browns work, both fine art paintings and textiles, have been seen across the US in various exhibitions. Her work can also be seen in a number of public and corporate institutions including universities, banks, museums and art centres. She also has a comprehensive website with a much wider selection of her work on show. The website can be found here.

All images were used with the kind permission of the artist.

Reference:

Peggy Brown Website

Peggy Brown Winter Water

The Bauhaus and Greta Skogster-Lehtinen

Greta Skogster-Lehtinen rug design 1930

As far as rug and tapestry design are concerned, the 1920s and 1930s in Europe at least, appear to have been dominated by both the Bauhaus school and its members and former members. The Bauhaus seemed to produce such a distinctive minimal style within the weaving medium, in both colour tones and composition, that it is sometimes difficult to perceive others reaching the same decorative conclusions as the Bauhaus, without being part of it.

However, the Bauhaus may well be the most famous example of minimal weaving and took great strides in reducing the influence of the artist and designer on the weaving discipline as part of a political ideal, but other areas of Europe were also following parallel lines and arriving at similar end points but taking a very different journey to get there.

A case in point is the early career of the Finn Greta Skogster-Lehtinen. Skogster-Lehtinen set up her first weaving workshop in Finland in 1921. She produced interior fabrics for the interior design industry, but from the early 1920s onwards started producing woven tapestries and rugs, as well as the more commercial work that kept her workshop going.

Greta Skogster-Lehtinen rug design 1930

The examples shown here are all rugs produced by her workshop in 1930 when Skogster-Lehtinen was running a weaving studio in Helsinki. All of these design pieces show an excellent grasp of both colour and composition and she has used the vertical and horizontal emphasis of the weaving process to produce a minimal architectural theme that was perfectly suited to the Art Deco and more particularly Modernist themed interiors of the 1930s.

What is interesting is the contrast in the creative approach between the Finnish weaver and the Bauhaus. Skogster-Lehtinen always worked as an independent individual. She approached her work as both an artist for the individual woven tapestries and rugs, and as a pragmatic designer when dealing with industry. However, she was never officially part of a school or organisation, as with the Bauhaus. She was a working weaver and had little time for manifestos and political idealism. Much of her inspiration came from the often minimal landscapes, both in colour tone and composition, of her native Finland and though no doubt influenced to some extent by the prevailing contemporary work being produced in Europe, including that of the Bauhaus, she was able to come to the same woven conclusions as the Bauhaus, while still maintaining her individual artistic identity.

Greta Skogster-Lehtinen rug design 1930

That is not to say that weavers at the Bauhaus did not pursue individual careers, or that they were incapable of independently moving on with those careers after they left the support of the Bauhaus, but it is interesting to note how different paths can lead to similar conclusions and whether you use the example of the artistic individuality taken by Skogster-Lehtinen, or the community led philosophy of the Bauhaus, the decorative end result is still very much the same.

There were of course a number of general influences that affected both Skogster-Lehtinen and the Bauhaus, chief among them being the constraining parameters when dealing with woven fabrics, tapestries and rugs, foremost of which is the physical characteristics of both the loom and the vertical and horizontal nature of the warp and weft. Stripping away excess decoration to reveal the underlying structure of the weave will undoubtedly bring together similar results, and though Skogster-Lehtinen may have experimented with that idea as an artist, while the Bauhaus did the same for more fundamental political reasons, both reached the same conclusions while following independent parallel paths.

Whether creative people work best individually, or as part of a group is probably up to the characteristics of the individual. That they can both reach similar conclusions while approaching from different angles perhaps says something, at least in part, about the synergy of the larger creative community.