Quiltmaker: unknown
Date: Circa 1900-1920
via The International Quilt Study Centre
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I am thinking about quilts again after a six month break. Tumbling Blocks are a wonderfully graphic block and quite time-less & place-less. They also provide lots of opportunity for small disruptions on a rigid design grid. This one here is from Jonathan Holstein’s groundbreaking 1971 Whitney quilt show—Abstract Design in American Quilts.
Christian Waller, ‘You will go now witch, and never enter this wood again’ (1932)
The wonderful work of Christian Waller was a happy discovery at the Art Gallery of New South Wales over the weekend. I am finding this kind of folky/art deco style very inspiring.
Cyril E. Power, The Merry-Go-Round, 1930 (color linocut)
I saw this book about early 20th-century British Prints in a bookshop in Melbourne today. Not sure how I missed it but it is a real ‘must buy’—Cyril E. Power’s work is particularly inspiring. I wish I had seen the travelling exhibition that coincided with the book’s publication.
A two-week holiday in Turkey last month was a total feast of visual inspiration. It was also a reminder that so often my assumptions about artistic periods and ethnic styles are defined by cliche rather than insight. This wonderful fragment of an Ottoman hanging from the V&A from the 17th century is a great example of the really interesting pieces I saw which combined graphic shapes with decorative and floral pattern. A happy lesson that there is a lot more to Ottoman art than Isnik tiles (as beautiful as they are as well!).
Beautiful antique quilt via 1stdibs
I finally finished reading Paul Poiret’s biography last night. I highly recommend it— a very fun and interesting insight in Paris and Couture Fashion at the turn of the century and some wise words in that way that only an ego-centric, pretentious albeit quite brilliant Frenchman can.
This image above is a textile fragment from Poiret’s Atelier Martine—a revolutionary place at the time for high-fashion and luxury furnishings. Poiret believed that untrained art students would create unique and ‘true’ art work. He saw his role as ‘“…to stimulate students’ activity and taste without influencing them or criticising, so that the source of their inspirations should be kept pure and intact….” Some of the works from the school were later issued as textile designs under his Atelier Martine label. Very beautiful results which foresaw the future direction of textile design and indeed today looks to the jaundiced eye very much like Marimekko or a late Matisse print!
image via FIDM Museum blog
I spent more hours today than I care to admit to tracing tiles to make this. Just looking at it still makes me feel a little bit sick.
Purchase yesterday from Dalston Oxfam. I surely do love this cover.
February 12, 2011
Upper Brockley Road, SE4
Neoclassical bookbindings at the Publishers Bindings collection.
