The thousands of textiles currently housed at the Brooklyn Museum are prime examples of the vast glo

The thousands of textiles currently housed at the Brooklyn Museum are prime examples of the vast global history of textile making and sewing traditions in New York City. In participation with New York Textile Month,we will be showcasing one textile per day for the month of September.  While difficult to narrow it down to only thirty textiles, we think these works are best at weaving narratives about topics such as innovations in the textile industry, craft and the beauty of the handmade, textiles from legendary designers like Frank Lloyd Wright and Anni Albers, as well as textiles with a sense of humor. Did you know that PeeWee’s Playhouse had a line of textiles made?This textile is part of a very large gift of 715 samples from the Onondaga Silk Company in 1964. As in the case of this sample, the designs are mostly flamboyant, large-scale, modernist if somewhat conservative, floral renderings many with gold and silver threads for up-market women’s dresses.  There are a few abstract, monochromatic, and striped designs as well. Most have various color-way swatches attached. The firm was founded by 1925 in New York and is best remembered for its late 1940s American Artist Print Series for which it engaged American painters to design textiles for production in an effort to interpret fine art and fashion. In 1947 they staged an exhibition of these textiles at the Midtown Gallery, on 57th Street, in Manhattan; the exhibition traveled to museums around the country as well. Although the firm always concentrated on silk textiles, in the post-World War II period they also experimented with rayon and polyester threads. American couturiers such as Adrian, Omar Kiam for Ben Regis, and Nettie Rosenstein all designed with Onondaga silks. The company went out of business in 1981.Posted by Barry R. Harwood, Lark Morgenstern, and Caitlin Crews -- source link

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