Test your design IQ
MANILA, Philippines - Who is the German-American textile artist and printmaker who is considered the best-known textile artist of the 20th century?
She was born in Berlin on June 12, 1899 of Jewish descent. Her mother was from an aristocratic family in the publishing industry and her father a furniture maker.
Unable to enroll in a glass workshop because she was a woman, she instead enrolled in a class in weaving.
Her instructor taught her to love the tactile construction challenges presented by weaving. In 1925, the Bahaus moved to Dessau and shifted its focus from craft to production.
During this time, she developed many functionally unique textiles that combined properties of light reflection, sound absorption, durability, and minimized wrinkling and warping tendencies. For a period, she studied under Paul Klee until she accepted a teaching position in 1928.
At the Bahaus, she experimented with new materials for weaving and executed richly colored designs on paper for wall hangings and textiles in silk, cotton, and linen yarns in which the raw materials and components of structure became the source of beauty.
When the Bahaus closed in 1933 under pressure from the Nazi party, she and her husband Josef accepted teaching positions in the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
Both taught college until 1949, during which time her weavings were shown throughout the United States, culminating in her 1949 show at the Museum of Modern Art, the first textile show in the museum. The show established her as the most well-known weaver of her day.
After leaving Black Mountain College, her husband Josef accepted a position as chair of the design department in Yale and she began working from her new home in Connecticut. She was commissioned to design a variety of bedspreads and other textiles for Harvard and spent much of the 1950s working on mass producible fabric patterns.
In 1963, she experimented with printmaking at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles and thereafter spent most of her time on lithography and screen printing. She published two books, On Designing and On Weaving.
In 1980, she received the second American Craft Council Gold Medal for “uncompromising excellence.†She continued to make prints and lecture until her death on May 9, 1994 in Connecticut.
Last week’s question: Who is the James Beard award-winning American chef whose French-Arcadian and Mexican ancestry influenced her acclaimed restaurants Jardiniere and Mijita Cocina Mexicana?
Answer: Traci des Jardins
Winner: Jonathan See of Potrero, Malabon
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Text your answer to 0915-6486414 with your name and address. One winner will be chosen through a raffle of texts with the correct answer. The winner will receive P2,000 worth of SM gift certificates for use at Our Home, SM Department Store, or SM Supermarket. They can claim their prize at Our Home in SM Megamall. Call the store manager at 634-1950.Bring photocopies of two valid IDs and a clipping of the Design Quiz issue in which you appear as winner.
