Rug Designs of Patriz Huber

Illustration: Patriz Huber. Rug design, c1901.

The German designer Patriz Huber produced work across a number of disciplines, mostly those directly involved with interiors such as furniture, ceramics, metal work, embroidery and rug design. However, he also produced a fairly substantial amount of jewellery work and a small amount of architecture. Much was expected from this unique and innovative designer who at the turn of the twentieth century was at the start of what would have proved to have been a genuinely illustrious career as one of the leaders of German design. Unfortunately he was to commit suicide in 1902 at the tragically young age of 24.

The six rug designs used to illustrate this article were produced very near the end of Huber's life. They show a sense of maturity that belies the age of the designer. So much so that many of his contemporaries celebrated that maturity by including him in a number of projects and events that should have been beyond him. He was, for example, one of the early residents of the Darmstadt Artists Colony, along with the likes of Paul Burck, Hans Christiansen, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Peter Behrens.

Illustration: Patriz Huber. Rug design, c1901.

One of the main boosts to Huber's career was the championing of his design and decorative work by Alexander Koch the publisher of some of the most important German magazines of the period such as Fachblatt fur Innen-Dekoration (Journal of Interior Decoration) first published in 1890 and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (German Art and Decoration) published from 1897 onwards. It was actually Koch that helped to persuade Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse to set land aside for the building of the Darmstadt Artists Colony in 1899. Koch was also involved in a whole range of initiatives set to expand the parameters of interior design and decoration, from the competition for the now famous Das Haus eines Kunstfreundes (House for an Art Lover) which was both sponsored and publicised in his Innen-Dekoration magazine, to advisor for the Turin International Exhibition of 1902.

Illustration: Patriz Huber. Rug design, c1901.

Koch's championing of Huber cannot be underplayed as it was his initial winning of a competition held by Koch's Innen-Dekoration magazine in 1898 that first brought the design work of Huber to the wider attention of Germany. Koch was an unfailing supporter and even after Huber left the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, a particular pet project close to the publisher's heart, he still received popular support from his widely-read and extremely influential magazines.

It is difficult to place Huber's rug design work within a specific area within the history of European decorative arts. Although producing much of his work during the Art Nouveau period, or the Jugendstil in Germany, it is hard to place the design work even in such a broad and comprehensive subject as the Art Nouveau movement. However, some of Huber's work was more conventionally placed, his furniture output in particular, so he cannot necessarily be placed as a maverick Art Nouveau designer along the lines of the Italian Carlo Bugatti for example.

Illustration: Patriz Huber. Rug design, c1901.

It is perhaps to the more unusual elements of his jewellery design that it is best to look for some correllation with this particularly innovative rug pattern work. Although many of Huber's jewellery examples seem very much in the mould of standard Art Nouveau fair, there are some peculiarly individual examples that hint to at least some elements that can be found within these rug examples. Some of the pattern work shown here resembles a range of simplified and quite complex motifs that are strictly symmetrically based and are either repeated once or sometimes twice, both vertically and horizontally, giving a much more complex approach to rug design than is perhaps usual for this period.

It would have been interesting to have known how Huber would have developed creatively over a full life rather than the severely foreshortened one he lived. He was known as both a craftsman and an architect, as well as that of an interior designer and applied artist. He left the Darmstadt Artists' Colony in 1901 along with Paul Burck and Hans Christiansen and eventually ended his life living in the capital Berlin where he was busy with a range of projects. His ambitions were wide-ranging and included projects that ranged from future architectural interests to that of designing a piano.

Illustration: Patriz Huber. Rug design, c1901.

Suicides are often hard to fathom as they cannot always be identified with such signifiers as long term depression and low self-esteem. At the very end of his life Huber was still working actively and had positive and long term projects and plans involving a number of individuals and companies. Alexander Koch, faithful to his creative discovery till the very end, published an upbeat letter that had been produced by Huber barely a month before he ended his life. This was to counter some particularly snide remarks and claims that the designer had committed suicide due to some form of artistic pride and career frustration. If the future of Huber's career had included even partial elements produced in this range of rug design examples, it would have been a truly remarkable body of work.

Illustration: Patriz Huber. Rug design, c1902.

Reference links:
Patriz Huber: Ein Mitglied der Darmstadter Kunstlerkolonie
Hesse: Darmstadt Artists' Colony, Rothaarsteig, Wartberg Culture, Hessian, Fischbach, University of Marburg, Rheingau, Bergstraße, Atlantis
Modern Style: Jugendstil/Art Nouveau 1899-1905
Schmuck in Deutschland und Osterreich, 1895-1914: Symbolismus, Jugendstil, Neohistorismus (Materialien zur Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts) (German Edition)
Jugendstil: Webster's Timeline History, 1863 - 2007
Jugendstil Guertelschlieýen / Art Nouveau Buckles: Sammlung Kreuzer / The Kreuzer Collection
Jugendstil & Werkkunst
Jugendstil.
Art nouveau in Munich: Masters of Jugendstil from the Stadtmuseum, Munich, and other public and private collections
Schmuck-Kunst im Jugendstil At Nouveau Jewellery

William Morris and the Peacock and Dragon

Illustration: William Morris. Peacock and Dragon, 1878.

The Peacock and Dragon is one of William Morris's woven, rather than printed textile designs. It was first produced in 1878 and was extremely expensive to both produce and consume.

Morris had his own carefully thought out ideas as to the hierarchy of textiles. Although producing large amounts of printed textiles himself, he firmly placed printed textiles at the bottom of the scale of skill and achievement, and interestingly he placed woven and embroidered textiles at the top. He estimated that this form of textile skill was deserving of special respect, and work produced in this medium represented some of the best examples that had been handed down through history.

Morris, because of his own philosophy regarding the merits of medieval Europe, was particularly interested in medieval woven and embroidered examples. He spent long hours exploring the details of stitch, weave and colour of both Christian and Islamic textiles held at the South Kensington Museum. It was Islamic woven textiles, and particularly those of Spain and Sicily, that gave Morris the eventual inspiration for the Peacock and Dragon design.

Illustration: Spanish Islamic weaving, 12th century.

Islamic Spain and Sicily along with Byzantium produced probably some of the finest decorative examples of woven textiles anywhere in medieval Europe. The sophistication of weave, composition and colour tone was far ahead of what could readily be achieved in the rest of Europe. Morris, ever one for gargantuan challenges, set out to produce a decorative woven pattern using the medieval Islamic examples that he had studied, as the inspirational starting point. Partially this was a personal challenge, but perhaps more importantly especially when regarding his ever-developing philosophy of creativity versus the commercial, it could be seen as a modern lesson in what could still be achieved if the time and energy of a group of individuals was harnessed towards creativity rather than profit.

Although using Islamic Spanish and Sicilian woven textiles as his inspiration, it does not mean that Morris ended up with a wholly Islamic looking textile design. The decoration, though following the general guide of medieval Islamic textile design, has much more in common with Victorian ideals and aspirations concerning medieval Europe, than that of the prospect of taking seriously the more problematic issue of the enormous influence, and in some respects guiding hand that Islam played in the development of the decorative arts in Europe.

This expensive woven textile was produced by Morris and was used within a number of interior settings, mostly as wall decoration. However, because of its fairly strident and particular design composition, it did tend to make it somewhat difficult when placing it within even a planned interior.

Illustration: William Morris. Peacock and Dragon, 1878.

Morris himself, although not a fan of geometrical decoration and pattern, was aware of the complexity and skill that was part of the Islamic decorative style. He was much more disposed towards the non-geometrical aspects of Islamic decoration, so much so that he felt able to incorporate some of the more obvious medieval Islamic aspects into a number of textile designs produced by Morris & Co after the design of 1878. Admittedly, not all were as obvious in their origin as Peacock and Dragon, but elements do show up in a number of subsequent designs, though mixed heavily with Morris's own medieval decorative ideals.

There are a couple of links should anyone be interested. The first is to a short article detailing the history of textiles within Islamic Spain, which can be found here. There is also an interesting article produced by the National Gallery of Australia concerning the conservation of a nearly three-metre piece of Morris's Peacock and Dragon textile, which can be found here. As always, there is a list of books available concerning this article in the reference links section below.

Further reading links:
Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain
Islamic Spain, 1250 to 1500
Islamic Arts from Spain
Caliphs And Kings: The Art and Influence Of Islamic Spain
Moorish Culture in Spain
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
Siculo-Norman Art: Islamic Culture in Medieval Sicily (Islamic Art in the Mediterranean)
History of Islamic Sicily (Islamic Surveys)
A History of Islamic Spain
A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain
Moorish Spain
Muslim Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus
Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain
Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwan (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)
The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History (The Middle Ages Series)

Finnish Embroidery

Illustration: Finnish embroidery, 18th century.

The history of embroidery in Finland is made more complicated by the history of the country itself. For over five hundred years, Finland was considered an integral part of the Swedish Empire, only to end that era by becoming part of the Russian Empire for just over a century. When Finland did eventually manage to gain full independence in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, it was the end of over half a millennium of foreign domination, both politically and culturally.

Finland naturally enough has a number of traditions that derived from outside the region, particularly that of Sweden and Russia. Finns themselves however, although seen as Scandinavians, derive their original language and culture from much further east and have strong links with cultures and peoples across northern Russia. Scandinavia is really a crude but convenient regional political generalization. It would perhaps be more accurate to see the area as western and eastern Scandinavia. The eastern would include Finland, Estonia, and some areas of western Russia, all of which share similar craft and to some extent, cultural ties that are distinct from that of their western neighbours in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

 Illustration: Finnish embroidery.

Much of Finnish embroidery was used in costume and was stitched onto a plain, often white background with either whitework or contrasting coloured threads, very often red being a particular favourite. Interestingly whitework was often used in Russia, and the use of red thread in particular was one of the most frequently and popular colours used. Finnish embroidery shares many core values with that of its eastern neighbour Russia, including a number of the motifs and decorative borders. This is not to say that Finnish embroidery and craft skills in general were subservient to those of the Russian Empire. Finland always maintained, despite centuries of domination and forced integration into the cultures of firstly Sweden and then Russia, its own unique identity through its sense of history, mythology, and craft, and while embroiderers might well have borrowed or integrated a certain amount of decorative ideas and themes, Finnish embroiderers remained a separate craft region.

Illustration: Finnish embroidery, 18th century.

Embroidery was by no means the only craft skill that Finns excelled in, but it was one of the most widely and publicly accessible forms of craft, and as in most of Europe it was dominated by women who were often skilled to professional levels but seen as belonging to the amateur. Embroidery is often identified with the public face of a culture or indigenous group, and although a certain amount of the craft has been influenced by fashion and outside forces, the core value of this important and often-neglected skill remains. Finns, as in many other cultures, have access to their long cultural history through the often-anonymous work produced by generations of women and their embroidery. The craft, both living and historical, is an invaluable reference for the often complex cultural and craft history of the region.

Further reading links:
Finlands medeltida konsthantverk =: Arts and crafts in Medieval Finland (Swedish Edition)
The Vanishing Beauty Of Finnish Peasant Handicraft: Talonpoikaisesineiston Katoavaa Kauneutta
Finland: Nature, Design, Architecture
Ryijy Rugs from Finland: 200 Years of a Textile Art; Organized by the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design and the Smithsonian Instiution Traveling Exhibition Service
THE LANGUAGE OF WOOD; Wood in Finnish Sculpture, Design and Architecture
FINNISH ARTS AND CRAFTS.
The Vanishing Beauty Of Finnish Peasant Handicraft: Talonpoikaisesineiston Katoavaa Kauneutta
Finland: Nature, Design, Architecture
Scandinavian Design 
Nature as object: Craft and design from Japan, Finland, and Australia
Scandinavian Craft Today: 35 Artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden
Embroidered Textiles: A World Guide to Traditional Patterns
Embroidered Textiles: Traditional Patterns from Five Continents : With a Worldwide Guide to Identification
Embroidery of All Russia
Embroidery: Traditional Designs, Techniques, and Patterns from All over the World