The Textile Blog becomes Design Decoration Craft

The Textile Blog is going in for a name change. Some of you might have noticed that Design Decoration Craft turned up on the banner a while ago in tandem with The Textile Blog. The old title will remain underneath the new for a short while until removed entirely leaving just the Design Decoration Craft banner as seen above. This was by no means a glib or spur of the moment change and was part of a longer, more fluid change in emphasis.

The name change has come about for a number of reasons; one important one being that the blog itself has outgrown the original premise of documenting historical textiles. Although textiles will always be an important part of the blog, creativity, decoration, interpretation, sustainability, inspirational pathways and the role of hand production past, present and future, as well as a number of other contemporary issues in a range of creative disciplines has become an important element of The Textile Blog and the direction it has found itself pursuing.

The title of Design Decoration Craft can loosely be interpreted as Design being seen as within the field of industry and the role of the designer, Decoration as all forms of pattern and embellishment, and Craft as being associated with hand production and the maker. By linking the three words together it is the intention to, as much as possible, place them within a framework of discussion. Although, as previously said, these are loose interpretations and open to expansion; it is perhaps a good guide to what may follow.

The site itself will not change radically, purposely so, and will continue with all the usual features you have grown to expect from The Textile Blog site. However, changes will occur over the coming months but it is hoped that these will be organic in nature and will help add to the experience rather than diminish. There are a number of new avenues I am wanting to explore with the blog and it hoped that these will add significantly to the new Design Decoration Craft experience.

The presence on twitter, facebook and google+ will continue and their significant role as a feature for contemporary design and craft work across the planet will be both maintained and indeed increased under the new banner. Please feel free to explore these sites as part of the Design Decoration Craft experience as they feature work, ideas and issues that complement the main site.

The Textile Blog has been a large feature of my life experience for four years and I would like to think that it is not being retired as such, but organically moving on to its next phase as the Design Decoration Craft site. I hope that you will continue to follow the blog in its new title format and that the experience will be even better than that engendered by The Textile Blog.

The Traditions of Culture Decoration and Creativity

Illustration: Moravian embroidered and laced apron border.

Often the influences, whether immediate or long-term, on the direction that a creative person takes in their work can seem less obvious than it first appears. Observational investigation, initial influences and source material are all used in tandem with casual and secondary inspiration, anything from a piece of music, a landscape or a an idle thought. These are all part of the process of creativity and although immediate personal surroundings do have a powerful influence on the creative mind, they are not always the most immediate or indeed influential.

Illustration: Bohemian embroidered cuff.

A good example is the use of childhood memories. Many artists and designers across the generations have been initially drawn towards large urban landscapes. After all, this was usually where the commercial and artistic heart of a nation or region was situated. Many of the European cities in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were cosmopolitan centres and no more so than the Central European city of Vienna. Vienna drew individuals from all corners of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire so that the population ranged from Bohemians, to Poles, Italians to Bosnians. All of these individuals, although wanting to make a success in the capital for a number of different reasons, also brought their unique ethnicity to Vienna, producing a complexity to the capital that although not always appreciated by the native German speaking population, was to highlight a sense of internationalism, at least within the context of Central Europe. This also had a profound effect on the decorative arts produced by Vienna during this period.

 Illustration: Galician embroidered head shawl.

If we look at the early years of the Wiener Werkstatte for example, we can see that although firmly part of the Viennese sophisticated urban landscape, the Werkstatte also maintained a number of influences from outside that immediate framework. A relatively large proportion of the designers and artists that worked for the Werkstatte actually didn't originate in Vienna at all, but came from different regions around the Empire. Josef Hoffmann, one of the main driving forces behind the Werkstatte, grew up in Moravia, part of the modern day Czech Republic. Although being an ethnic German himself, Hoffmann was well aware that he was a minority living within the traditions of a Slav culture. He was also aware that the craft and decorative traditions of Moravia were part of his background and therefore also part of his creative inspiration when it came to his own work. More intriguingly he was also aware that the use of his initial childhood background and memories were capable of lasting his creative lifetime, at least in some form.

 Illustration: Lower Austrian embroidered bedcurtain border.

It is important to reflect that childhood memories can be some of the most powerful that we will ever come across. Many are much clearer and more concise than later adult memories. A creative person may well use some of these most potent influences on their psyche, all the way through their creative life. The fact that they may well be mixed with thoughts, ideas and influences of the contemporary landscape that they find around themselves does not negate the powerful influence that these memories hold. In that respect it is interesting to think that various traditions can seep into contemporary art and design work without even being noticed, at least consciously.

The five illustrations that make up this article are all example of traditional textile craftwork from various ethnic regions of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. They by no means cover all the diverse regions of a complex and multi-layered empire, but they do give an indication of some of the decorative ideas that artists and designers of the Wiener Werkstatte might well have brought with them when moving to Vienna. These unique regional styles and attitudes towards craft and decoration could well have been used to reflect at least a modicum of the contemporary work produced by the Werkstatte during the early years of the twentieth century. It is intriguing to think that the contemporary is somehow beholden to the traditional, even if only in a small and semi-conscious manner. 

Illustration: Slavonian embroidered woman's dress.

Although it is often thought by a number of critics that an artist, designer or craftsperson should be seen as a unique creative individual divorced from the petty limitations of their regional and ethnic background, this is very often far from the truth. The complexity of an individual is made up of family, community, social and cultural backgrounds that are part of the weave of that individual. It can often influence the work produced by a creative person. So, no matter if an artist, designer, or crafts person lives in New York, Moscow or Sydney, it is not just a matter of the contemporary landscape that is a factor, but so much more. Even if an individual escapes to the big city to immerse themselves in the complexity, ethnicity and often anonymity of a large urban centre, they will always have with them the elements of their background, traditions, social and cultural factors in which they were born and raised. This they may well decide to reject consciously, whether the unconscious decides to influence their creativity regardless, is an intriguing conjecture.

Further reading links:

Landscape and the Creative Artist

Illustration: Walter Leistikow. Havellandschaft mit Segelbooten, c1898.

The graphic styled art work shown in these three examples was produced by the German artist and designer Walter Leistikow at the very end of the nineteenth century. The seeming simplicity of the artwork belies the intimate and emotive issues produced for and by the creative artist himself.

Leistikow produced a number of landscapes, both through painting and printing. Although spending most of his adult life in Berlin, the artist produced large sections of his work based on the area in which he grew up. His nostalgia for his childhood landscape gives us remembrances of his own character and memories. His perspective on his own familiar landscape gives these pieces a sense of practical and technical reality as they occupied real spaces in the environment. However, they were also imbued with a sense of his own personal time period and the thoughts and feelings that were associated with that specific mental space. This created an important additional perspective, one of almost dreamlike proportions. The landscapes therefore became both emotional and practical, forging a set of specific parameters in time and space that were of the artists own choosing. 

Illustration: Walter Leistikow. Letzte Flugelschlage, 1890s.

In landscape interpretation in general it is perhaps the sense of the manipulation of time and environment that gives artistic creativity its special uniqueness. Whilst an onlooker can no doubt agree that a landscape produced by an artist is a definite, a specific point on the planet that truly exists within the day to day, it is also very much part of the particular and original thought of the artist. The two are not always the same thing and can often diverge and overlap giving the impression that a landscape is both there in real time but also part of an individual's personal, and therefore uniquely manipulated memory, a joining of the physical and the mental.

Sometimes landscape can appear near faultless, as if a photograph. Holding the creative interpretation against the real natural setting sees little difference apart perhaps from the movement of a tree to a better setting, or changing the curve of a shoreline to produce a better effect. However, often it is a matter of emotional content, content that is indelibly wrapped in a number of emotive layers that have to do with issues that are often rooted in a sense of personal belonging, balance, connectedness even with the physical landscape involved. Although these and other issues are not always foreseen by the artist, they are often present in the creative process, and certainly can be seen or felt in the finished piece.

Illustration: Walter Leistikow. Markische Landschaft mit Bauerngehoft und See, c1898.

To observe a landscape interpreted by a creative artist is one thing, to understand the connectedness that that particular artist has imbued into a specific landscape interpretation is another matter entirely. The observer can only be that, an observer. Even if they are familiar with the specific place and even perhaps the time, it will still be a matter of personal emotive issues that colour their own interpretation of the work, rather than a real connectedness with the artist. 

In this way we can admire the landscape work of Leistikow for example, but we can never appreciate the full depth of meaning. We are strangers in an emotional landscape created by the artist, a marriage of one individual to an environment. As long as we are aware of this then it does not really alter our appreciation of the artist's creative work, but it does, in some ways, forever lock us out of the emotionally intimate connectedness that was only his to experience. That he agreed to pass on the more generalised connections to others and in some small way to pass on the experience, is his legacy.

Further reading links: