WOMEN'S WORK: TEXTILE ART FROM THE BAUHAUS
Sigrid Wortmann Weltge
Sigrid Wortmann Weltge: WOMEN'S WORK: TEXTILE ART FROM THE BAUHAUS. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993. First American edition. Quarto. Black cloth stamped in red. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 208 pp. 133 color illustrations. Many black and white text images. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Slight wear overall, but a nearly fine copy in a nearly fine dust jacket.
9.25 x 11.5 hardcover book with 208 pages, 133 color reproductions and many black and white images. This is the best survey on the textile artwork produced in the Bauhaus workshops and beyond: following the work of pioneers like Angelo Testa and others. Includes work by Anni Albers, Gertrud Arndt, Otti Berger, Liz Beyer, Lilly Reich, Gunta Stolzl, Angelo Testa and many, many others.
- Beginnings
- The Weimar Years
- The Gender Issue
- Gunta Stolzl
- The Question Of Identity
- The Weaving Workshop And Johannes Itten
- Georg Muche And The 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition
- The Dessau Years
- Dessau--A New Direction
- From Craft To Industry
- Bauhaus Fabrics
- The Purge
- The Legacy
- A New Frontier
When talented female students arrived to study at the Bauhaus, they soon discovered that the founder of the school, Walter Gropius, was not strictly adhering to his original declaration of equality between men and women. In the hierarchy of art and design, it was textiles that were deemed to be "women's work."
The new weavers responded to the challenge with remarkable virtuosity, pouring all their artistic energy and talent into this new field of interest. Eagerly embracing advanced technology, they incorporated new or unusual materials (such as Cellophane, leather and early synthetics), creating reversible fabrics which had acoustic and light-reflecting properties. They produced multi-layered cloths, some with double and triple weaves, and later made extensive use of the jacquard loom. The result was a rebirth of hand-weaving and a new professionalism in designing textiles for mass production.
In this model study, superbly illustrated with rare or little seen photographs of the works themselves, Sigrid Wortmann Weltge recreates the atmosphere of creative excitement at the Bauhaus. Original archival research and interviews with survivors and their students, as well as with leading contemporary designers, detail the workshop's history and its enduring legacy: marvelous fabrics still being produced today. This book unearths the missing chapter in the story of the most important institution in the history of modern design.
Sigrid Wortmann Weltge is Professor in the History of Art and Design at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.