Textile Designs: Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns for Printed Fabrics Organized by Motif, Style, Color, Layout, and Period (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish Edition) - Hardcover

Susan Meller; Joost Elffers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810938537 ISBN 13: 9780810938533

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 1991

Synopsis

Looks at floral, geometric, conversational, ethnic, and art movements and period fabric designs

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Never Before Has the universe of printed textiles had a book of this magnitude and lavishness devoted to it. Covering the past two hundred years, during which the industrial revolution drastically altered textile manufacture, Textile Designs: Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns presents a dazzling cross section of the colorful patterned materials that decorate our rooms and clothe our bodies. These are the textiles of the common man, as opposed to the opulent woven silk brocades, damasks, and velvets that were, before the eighteenth century, almost the only beautifully designed fabrics available. While textile museums' collections tend to focus on these elite and costly examples or emphasize rarities, this volume deals extensively with the textiles of everyday life - the printed calicos and cottons, flowered cretonnes and chintzes, polka-dot silks and foulards. More important, textile museums and books about their collections organize the examples chronologically and geographically. Here, for the first time, is a method of categorizing that is unique and practical: fabrics are organized by motif irrespective of period. Revolutionary!

A rich and colorful resource in which glamour and usefulness are stunningly combined, this visual encyclopedia of design motifs groups textiles by pattern into five chapters under the headings FLORAL, GEOMETRIC, CONVERSATIONAL, ETHNIC, and ART MOVEMENTS AND PERIOD STYLES. These chapters follow an introduction that provides a brief discussion of printed textiles. Because of the widespread interest in the subject, this book is published in a worldwide English-language edition that includes translations of all of the pattern names as well as brief introductions in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.

Textile Designs will be indispensable to professionals in the apparel and home-furnishing fields everywhere, an inspiration to designers in the graphic and visual arts, a reference book for quiltmakers and collectors (nearly all the textiles illustrated are dated, and country of origin is identified), and a feast for the eye for lovers of the beautiful.

1,823 plates in full color

Reviews

Take one measure of design theory, add a cup of printing techniques, and fold in a tablespoon of ancient symbology. Add a dash of historical context, and mix well into a huge bowl of over 1800 gorgeous fabric designs. The ingredients make a luscious dessert known as Textile De signs . Meller, the owner of the fabrics depicted here, has interpreted her dessert in five different ways according to motif: floral, geometric, conversational, ethnic, and art movements and period styles. To please the most discriminating palate, she used only the best ingredients (some rarities dating to the 18th century) from her design library and design loft. The book is a colorful confection, but it is also a thoughtful and informative analysis of the artistic choices that are subconscious interpretations of the moods, longings, and aspirations of humankind. Highly recommended for design or decorative arts collections.
- Sherry Porter, Texas Coll. of Osteopathic Medicine, Fort Worth
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface: This book is the catalogue for the largest picture show in the world: the images on printed cloth. The authors have been fascinated throughout their lives by patterns like these - Susan Meller within the textile industry, Joost Elffers as a conceptual thinker about design. Patterns appear in all kinds of places throughout the history of visual art. It is on printed cloth, however, that they are most ubiquitous and, at the same time, least noticed, for here they are so common as to be commonplace. In part, Textile Designs is intended to redress the injustice of that invisibility, for it is a testament to the creativity of the anonymous artists of the textile industry.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810938537
• ISBN 13: 9780810938533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464