Famous Textiles Designers

Florence and Hans Knoll

Last week we toured an event of Knoll Textiles (1945–2010) during the Bard scholar Center. The textiles and items were breathtaking, but what hit me most had been the rich story of women in design — from the founding inside 1940s through to the current, practically all Creative Directors of textile unit happen ladies (apart from a short span in 1980s). While Florence Knoll is children name, the women she employed and people which later accompanied the lady are less famous, so here's a brief "who's who" of over 50 many years of women who helped to contour textile design at Knoll and beyond.

Marianne Strengell (webbing) and Ralph Rapson (seat). Pebble-Weave webbing on Rapson rocking seat. Ca. 1945. Birch, cotton webbing. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

• : the girl "behind the brand name, " Florence Knoll studied design under Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe before working for Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Wallace K. Harrison. She married Hans Knoll in 1946, exactly the same year she became his complete business and design companion. Florence headed Knoll Textiles and pioneered the Knoll preparing device, advocating "total design" — a philosophy that closely integrated textiles, design, area preparation, interior decorating, production, layouts, and branding.
• : Florence Knoll and Finnish fashion designer Marianne Strengell attended Cranbrook Academy in Michigan together. Marianne designed 1st Knoll textile — a pattern called Shooting Stars — and her work helped to profile their textile unit with its very early many years. From 1937 to 1961, Marianne worked as a professor at Cranbrook and — for some of the time — was mind associated with school's textile department.
• : a fruitful musician and visual designer, she was also the spouse of this popular Czech designer Antonin Raymond. The Raymonds invested most of the 20s and 30s working on architectural tasks in Japan, when Noémi started designing fabrics for Knoll, her work made powerful recommendations to old-fashioned Japanese shibori (tye-dye) and katazome (stencil-dyeing).