Embroidered Frontal of Ann Macbeth

Illustration: Ann Macbeth. Embroidered frontal for the communion table (detail), St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, c1910.

Although Ecclesiastical embroideries have a long and traditional history in Britain, the nineteenth century saw a particularly enthusiastic reinvigoration of the partnership of craft and church. The trend could, in some respects at least, be traced back to the enthusiasm of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin for both a gothically inspired revival of the decorative arts in Britain, as well as a renewal of the partnership between the arts and the church.

Embroidery was seen as a perfect vehicle for ecclesiastical furnishings and vestments with its penchant for embellishment and use of precious and semi-precious materials. By the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, ecclesiastical embroidery was well featured and design work for this particular and fairly exclusive market was being produced by some of the leading architects and designers of the day. Ecclesiastical embroidery continued to be featured within international exhibitions throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century.

What probably gave this form of the craft its real push towards the ecclesiastical was the fact that it had become an early and integral part of the British Arts & Crafts movement, with William Morris himself providing elaborate embroidered altar fronts and vestments through Morris & Co, and included decorative and design work provided by Morris daughter May. That Morris was to include ecclesiastical embroidery within the remit of his largely domestically themed interior supply company Morris & Co, does tend to show the potentially lucrative and status driven market for church furnishings and vestments.

Through the Arts & Crafts movement came the concept of art embroidery which soon spread to the ecclesiastical market. A number of artists were commissioned to supply embroidered work for the church and indeed the church became an enthusiastic commissioner of crafts in many forms including embroidery. There was also another level of embroidery craft that supplied numerous churches and chapels throughout Britain during the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Enthusiastic suppliers of amateur embroidery became the mainstay of a number of parishes. Some were designed by amateurs while others were copies of more familiar ecclesiastical embroideries. The moniker of amateur can sometimes be misleading, as the level of embroidery skills maintained by British women during this period was much higher than perhaps we would expect and in many cases could well be on a par with professional embroiderers.

Illustration: Ann Macbeth. Embroidered frontal for the communion table, St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, c1910.

During the first few years of the twentieth century Ann Macbeth who was closely associated with the Glasgow School of Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau styling, produced this embroidered frontal for the communion table of St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow. It was featured in a number of contemporary magazines and is perhaps typical with the style that we have come to associate with the Glasgow School. It is a highly decorative piece that while coloured still maintains a good compositional control of both colour and narrative. The embroidery work itself has not been allowed to dominate the composition. This was often a feature with the work of Macbeth who produced embroidery that often played down fussy techniques and respected the initial decorative design work.

Macbeth was equally concerned with both domestic and ecclesiastical embroidery and her work tended to be similar in both respects. However, it would be fair to say that her church embroideries did tend towards the higher status end of her design work, as this Glasgow Cathedral frontal shows. In a future article Macbeth's equally considered and highly effective embroidery for the St Bartholomew Church in Haslemere, which was produced at roughly the same time as the Glasgow Cathedral piece, will be featured on The Textile Blog.

Often ecclesiastical embroidery is dismissed or marginalised in our contemporary secular world, in favour of domestic and ethnically derived work. This is a shame as much of the European high status embroidery work of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which often had large amounts of time and professional creativity spent on it, was designated for the church. These pieces reflect both an era and a particular style of embroidery work that gives us a valuable lesson in the high standard of achievement and creativity that could be found within the craft of embroidery.

Reference links:
St Mary's Cathedral Glasgow 
The country woman's rug book (Paragraph Press reprint series of craft & hobby handbooks)
Embroidered and laced leather work
Educational Needlecraft (1911)
Glasgow School of Art: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Ann Macbeth, Margaret Macdonald, Robbie Coltrane, Cathy Jamieson, Dalziel + Scullion
School and fireside crafts,
Victorian embroidery (The Victorian collector series)
Needlecraft Practical Journal #85 c.1910 - Ecclesiastical Embroidery
Butterick Art & Ecclesiastical Embroidery c.1898 (Metropolitan Handy Series)
Ecclesiastical Embroidery (Batsford Embroidery Paperback)
Embroidery in the Church
Clothed in Majesty: European Ecclesiastical Textiles from the Detroit Institute of Arts
English ecclesiastical embroideries of the XIII. to XVI. centuries

Tapestry Design by Urban Janke

 Illustration: Urban Janke. Tapestry design, c1908.

The Wiener Werkstatte designer Urban Janke was born in Bohemia in what was to become Czechoslovakia and then later the Czech Republic. Although he was mostly employed as an educator, working in the Arts and Crafts School system from 1908, he was also involved in a number of craft disciplines, producing work in illustration, glass and textiles. Although Janke's glasswork is still available and can be found at auction, as well as a selection of postcard work that he produced during the 1910s, which although now somewhat fragile is still cropping up regularly at auction, there is little in the way of surviving textile work.

This tapestry piece which was illustrated in a 1908 edition of the German magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, seems to be one of the few images of Janke's textile work that survives. It is an extremely well decorated piece that easily manages to integrate both pattern work and a representational character, in this case a stylised stag. Pattern work in its many forms was an important part of the output of the Wiener Werkstatte. Surface decoration played a role in most of the craft forms that the Werkstatte produced whether that be furniture, glass, ceramics or textiles. It was this dependence on pattern that in some ways at least, helped to separate and identify the Wiener Werkstatte as a truly original and individual style that was exclusive to Vienna.

The Werkstatte was in many respects a reflection of the multi-ethnicity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many designers were included in the organization from all corners of the Empire and all brought significant amounts of localised pattern and decorative energy to Vienna. That Janke was originally from Blottendorf, modern day Polevsko, in Bohemia is significant. Blottendorf was at the centre of a long tradition of glass painters, engravers and cutters that went back to the seventeenth century, and possibly before. That Janke was influenced by these surroundings and particularly by the local craft skill of glass, despite the fact that he studied at the Arts & Crafts School in Vienna, and not locally, adds to the suggestion that localised skills and decorative styles had an effect on a number of Wiener Werkstatte designers, which in turn would have affected, if discreetly, the overall imagery of the Werkstatte and its own decorative style.

Illustration: Urban Janke. Decorated glassware, c1914.

Because Janke's textile work is very hard to locate, included in this article is a second illustration of a piece of his decorated glass work and gives at least some indication as to the style of work that can be attributed to Janke. This is a decorated glass piece that was reproduced in a 1914 issue of a second German magazine Dekorative Kunst. This piece perhaps gives more of an idea as to Janke's penchant for decorative pattern work, and also his obvious and mature understanding of decoration and the positive effect it could have in contributing towards the look and style of a piece.

Unfortunately Janke died in the same year that the Dekorative Kunst article was published. He was an early casualty of the First World War, dying before he was even thirty. It is unknown what real direction Janke would have taken had he survived the war. He was an excellent graphic and illustrative artist, as well as being a designer of numerous glass pieces for such companies as the Austrian glass company J & L Lobmeyr for which the illustrated glass piece was produced. He was also a founder member of the Austrian Werkbund set up in 1912. Although similar in many respects, and with equally staged ambitions to that of the German Werkbund, namely closer integration between industry and designer, the Austrian version was much less exclusive and elitist.

As well as his participation in the Wiener Werkstatte, along with his teaching career it is hard to tell where Janke would have reached creatively, if he had been allowed to live a full life. However, one thing is certain he would easily have maintained a career that would have added at least some of his individual creative dimension towards the decorative arts history of Central Europe.

Reference links:
Wiener Werkstatte: 1903-1932 (Special Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte: 1910-1932
Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstatte
Postcards of the Wiener Werkstatte
Wonderful Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Wiener Werkstatte: Avantgarde, Art Deco, Industrial Design (German Edition)
A Guide to Czech & Slovak Glass

Peter Behrens Rug Designs

Illustration: Peter Behrens. Rug design, c1902.

The German Peter Behrens is often thought of as a seminal architect and industrial designer who played an important role in the rationalisation of design and decoration. Behrens was an influential figure as regards Modernism and has his place in the pantheon of twentieth century modernisers. However, Behrens also produced work in disciplines that were not always immediately associated with rational Modernism, such as ceramics, glass and textiles.

The three rug designs illustrated in this article were produced by Behrens in the first few years of the twentieth century and may well have been designed when he was still a resident of the Darmstadter Kunstlerkolonie (Darmstadt Art Colony). It is here that the artist and designer built his first house and therefore added architect to his rapidly burgeoning cv. It is said that the building of the Behrens house at Darmstadt, helped to galvanise the designers' ideas concerning a rational approach to design and helped to move him away from the Jugendstil styling that was still so much a part of fashionable German design and decoration.

Illustration: Peter Behrens. Rug design, c1904.

Behrens house was deliberately conceived as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art. Therefore, everything both inside and outside of Behrens house was coordinated and balanced so that there was a sense of harmony throughout the house. Gesamtkunstwerk became an important element within interior design and decoration, though the ideal of a total work of art was by no means limited to interiors and the phrase was often used for a number of creative ideas and events, particularly within German nineteenth century staged opera. The ideal was that of an event that incorporated all of the creative arts within one significant project. However, as far as interiors were concerned gesamtkunstwerk concerned itself with the integration of architecture, design and decoration, very often under the exclusive guidance of one individual, usually an architect. This idea gained in both momentum and importance the nearer the era came to the twentieth century and gesamtkunstwerk projects could be found across Europe and North America and included such architects and designers as Josef Hoffmann, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright. Behrens himself coordinated furniture, ceramics, glass and textiles within his Darmstadt home and so therefore the three rug design examples shown here, although not necessarily total art works in their own right, should be considered as examples that may well have been influenced by the idealism of gesamtkunstwerk.

The three rug examples, one square and two rectangular, are extremely structured and relatively minimal, at least as far as decorative flourish is concerned. However, all of the examples appear as harmoniously balanced decorative projects. It is a mistake to think that because a design is symmetrical, controlled and stable, that it somehow lacks both the dynamism and creative life of a deliberately asymmetrical and casual approach. Behrens design work is a fascinating glimpse of work produced just a few years before he was involved in the foundation of the Deutscher Werkbund along with the likes of fellow German designers such as Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and Josef Maria Olbrich. The Werkbund became one of the most important foundation stones of the twentieth century's Modernist movement, and represented a fundamental shift in both the relationship between designer and manufacturer, which had often been problematic, and the adoption of a rationalist approach to design across many disciplines both industrial and interior.

Illustration: Peter Behrens. Rug design, c1904.

Behrens rug examples from this period, along with those of a number of his contemporaries, gives an indication of where the general consensus regarding design and decoration was truly leading, at least initially in Germany, and later in the rest of Europe. It is often misleading to see Modernism and its relationship with industry, as being an enemy to self-expression in the decorative arts and crafts. While mass-production has destroyed much of the hand craft industry, this was started long before the idea of Modernism emerged. If we were to be brutally truthful, hand production was not always as inspiring and creative as we would like to believe. While the work itself was often above the standard of that produced by mass production methods, the design and pattern work could often be both derivative and lacking in any form of creativity lacking any compositional balance or harmony. In this respect Behrens rug design work should be seen as a sensitive, intelligent and above all individual addition to the Modernist approach. While many in the Modernist movement idealised the machine and its role in contemporary life, others were more circumspect concerning the propensity of the machine to dominate and solve, and valued the human role of individual creativity and felt that design and decoration would be the poorer without the dynamism that that entailed.

The struggle between finding a fruitful and creative balance between machine and human creativity has continued to this day and will probably continue for some time to come. There is no definite answer and although there have been many iniatives over much of the twentieth century and into our own, none of these really addresses the problem of finding a harmony between the two often conflicting systems. We are left with either complete capitulation or open hostility.

Reference links:
Peter Behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth Century
Industriekultur: Peter Behrens and the AEG, 1907-1914
Peter Behrens: Architect and Designer
Peter Behrens in Duesseldorf: Die Jahre Von 1903 Bis 1907 (German Edition)
Design of the 20th Century (TASCHEN Icons Series)
German Design for Modern Living
Steel and Stone: Constructive Concepts by Peter Behrens and Mies van der Rohe
German Industrial Designers: Luigi Colani, Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, Peter Behrens, Marianne Brandt, Ingo Maurer, Dieter Rams

Cecil Millar and the Power of Chintz

Illustration: Cecil Millar. Silk brocade textile design, c1906.

At one point in time during the first few years of the twentieth century, the English designer Cecil Millar was spoken of in the same terms as Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, Walter Crane, Lindsay Philip Butterfield, Lewis F Day and Sydney Mawson. However, today his name has been largely forgotten despite the fact that he produced a fair amount of popular decorative work.

The two examples shown here were produced around the year 1906 and were included within The Studio magazines annual yearbook for that year. The first example is that of a silk brocade, while the second is that of a wool tapestry fabric, both were meant as interior fabrics which was seen as one Millar's particular strong points.

Millar's style seems to have been one that, although not doggedly nostalgic, did take into consideration the long history of English textile pattern work in particular. Although still based on natural observation, Millar's work was much more inspired by a stylised interpretation of nature, and was often referred to as 'chintz-like', although this was not necessarily an exact interpretation of his work. Although his work could sometimes appear to be somewhat heavier and more formalised than perhaps some of his contemporaries during this period, his styling did take into account both the British penchant for chintz and other textile design work that followed closely this particular style.

Chintz itself is a large and fascinating subject. Although the style has been associated with India, where it originated, it also has a long independent history across Europe, being produced in a number of individual and nationalistic styles. English chintz has proved consistently popular throughout its decorative history, at least in England. It has served well as an interior fabric and has been reinvented and reimagined by any number of designers and manufacturers.

Illustration: Cecil Millar. Wool tapestry textile design, c1906.

To show the power that this borrowed Indian design style truly has had on both the British psyche and their interiors, can be seen by giving a clear example. An extraordinary British advertising campaign by Ikea, the Swedish flat-pack interiors company, at the very start of the twenty first century, advised the British to throw out their chintz in favour of Ikea's own imaginative interpretation of Scandinavian Modern. The campaign quickly back-fired and led to accusations ranging from bullying to dissmisiveness, misunderstanding and even deliberate misinterpretation of national tastes and styles. Although only meant as a light-hearted advertising campaign, the interpretation that many in Britain took, clearly ended that particular form of advertising.

This near contemporary example goes someway into explaining not only the British attachment to particular styles and motifs in pattern work that are seen as near domestic in origin, but also generally those of different peoples and cultures across the planet. Ikea's mistake perhaps was to imagine that their own multi-international style could remove national flavours and taste. However, these national and often regional quirks, although an irritation to internationally motivated companies that have little interest in accommodating any real form of regionalism and ethnic and cultural diversity, can often be part of a much more fundamental feeling. Often they can give a sense of belonging and of a shared and communal understanding, even when considering a seemingly innocuous textile motif or pattern.

This also concerns the subject of Cecil Millar and some of his traditionally styled textile work. Although the examples shown here might well have been outside the remit of the popular and fashionable Art Nouveau styling that still dominated Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, chintz was still a style that many of the British public were both familiar and comfortable with. To attempt to remove a style from a culture merely for the sake of it, or in Ikea's case for profit, can often prove to be counter-productive and even invasive. This is not to say that the public should not be offered contemporary alternatives to old favourites, but if the old favourites prove too powerful a draw, then perhaps the alternative would be the route that Millar took in at least part of his patterned output, the re-imagining and re-interpretation of a faithful and much loved decorative style. Interestingly, the fact that Ikea now produces its own variation of chintz is perhaps telling.

Reference links:
Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West
Chintz (3rd Edition) : The Charlton Standard Catalogue
Trade Goods: A Study of Indian Chintz in the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Smithsonian Institution
Origins of Chintz
Chintz by design
Chintz and Cotton India's Textile Gift to the World
The Chintz Collectors Handbook
Chintz Quilts: Unfading Glory
Printed Fabrics: Bingata, Chintz, Kalamkari, Androsia, Nankeen, Cretonne
English Chintz
Two Centuries of English Chintz, 1750-1950
The Chintz Collection: the Calico Museum of Textiles, India: 2 Volumes, Limited Edition

Owen Jones and the Moresque

Illustration: Owen Jones. Moresque Decoration from The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856.

In 1832 when Owen Jones was in his early twenties, he started off on a Grand Tour of Europe. The fact that the tour would take up possibly the most important two years of Jones life and culminate in the parameters that were to shape his future career shows how fundamental this early touring aspect of Jones life really was.

He started off with the mandatory visit to Italy, then moved on to Greece where he was to meet Jules Goury a French architect who became his travelling companion when the two moved on to Egypt. Here both young men were obviously intrigued by the remnants remaining from the Ancient Egyptian culture, as most were at the time and still are. However, what intrigued them most was the abundant Islamic pattern work that they discovered in Cairo.

Illustration: Owen Jones. Moresque Decoration from The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856.

Cairo was never wholly part of the Ancient Egyptian world, or even that of Christian Egypt, but had been constructed as an Islamic statement. Although the city has now expanded and incorporated a number of settlements from various eras of Egyptian history, it is still counted as one of the great achievements of the Islamic world. Both Jones and Goury studied the complex and wide ranging examples of Islamic decoration that could be found in the capital of Egypt, and in some respects, this exploration helped to form ideas about surface pattern, decoration and ornamentation and the way that geometry and the abstraction from the real world played such a large role in Islamic decoration.

When Jones and Goury moved on via Constantinople to Spain, it was the Islamic period of the Iberian peninsulas history that drew them to Granada and inevitably the Alhambra. Although still relatively early as far as travel and exploration within the nineteenth century was concerned, the two young men were by no means the only visitors to what many see as one of the high points of Islamic architectural and decorative achievement. A number of writers and travellers had visited the Alhambra and literature on the subject, while not necessarily extensive in the early part of the nineteenth century, was still readily available. Probably the most widely read publication from the 1830s was that of the American writer Washington Irving who had lived actually in the Alhambra in 1829 and had published The Alhambra in 1832.

Illustration: Owen Jones. Moresque Decoration from The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856.

Although Cairo had shifted both Jones and Goury's awareness of Islamic architecture, decoration and ornamentation, it was the Alhambra that made fundamental changes in both men's theories concerning pattern and geometry. During their six month stay at the palace complex the two men studied pattern work in great detail, much of which was to go towards a publication that would be the culmination of the creative partnership between the two men. It would deal not only with the technical aspects of Islamic architecture and design, but also give indications as to how Islamic decoration could be used at least on an inspirational level, for contemporary European decoration and ornamentation, particularly within the discipline of surface pattern.

Unfortunately Jules Goury died of cholera while at the Alhambra at the ridiculously early age of 31. However, Jones insisted when on returning to London, to produce both his and Goury's findings and did so in an exhaustive nine year long publication over twelve parts from 1836 to 1845. The book was entitled Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra and as its title suggests was a detailed technical and analysed report on the building complex of the Alhambra. Although costing Jones a fortune not only in publication fees, but also in complex colour printing costs, the book did place Owen Jones in a position whereby he became rapidly recognised as both a critic and scholar concerning the theory of design and decoration.

Illustration: Owen Jones. Moresque Decoration from The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856.

Jones went on to publish more ground breaking publications that went to reinforce his reputation. However, at the core of both his theories and scholastic knowledge was the world of Islamic decoration, but more particularly that of the Alhambra. So much so that one of the largest chapters in his 1856 volume The Grammar of Ornament was dedicated to the Alhambra. The illustrations in this article are all drawn from that 1856 chapter.

To say that Islamic decoration profoundly affected both the career and idealism of Jones is not a wild exaggeration. The technical aspects of geometry and flat pattern work lay at the heart of much of Jones theorising, but also at the heart of much of his own contribution to the decorative arts, particularly within the fields of textile and wallpaper design. Without Jones visit to the Alhambra, his fundamental theories concerning architecture, pattern, decoration and ornamentation, may well have not made the impressive impact that they inevitably did. That nineteenth century pattern work would have continued to impress with its skill and craftsmanship is without doubt. However, without the contribution of Jones and his fascination with the fundamental aspects of Islamic decoration as perceived through the work produced over centuries at the Alhambra, contemporary work during the period of jones career may well have suffered without his valuable contribution.

Illustration: Owen Jones. Moresque Decoration from The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856.

Reference links:
Islamic Decoration and Ornament as seen by Owen Jones
The Grammar of Ornament: All 100 Color Plates from the Folio Edition of the Great Victorian Sourcebook of Historic Design (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Owen Jones: Design, Ornament, Architecture & Theory in an Age of Transition
Decorative Ornament
Tales of the Alhambra
Splendors of Islam: Architecture, Decoration and Design
Islamic architecture and its decoration, A.D. 800-1500;: A photographic survey
Islamic Designs in Color (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Ornament and Decoration in Islamic Architecture
The Language of Pattern : an Enquiry Inspired By Islamic Decoration
Islamic Design (Dover Pictura)
Islamic Designs (International Design Library)
Islamic Ornament
The Language of Pattern: An Enquiry Inspired by Islamic Decoration (Icon Editions)
Geometric Patterns from Islamic Art & Architecture
Pattern in Islamic Art