Five Textiles You Shouldn't Miss at the Kravet Archive Exhibition
Every New Textile Has a History
“We hope to provide perspective on how designs from the past can readily be interpreted and produced for the future of design.”
If you are a textile designer, an interior designer, or simply a fan of the craft and tradition of creating gorgeous fabrics, treat yourself to “Pattern & Process, Selections from Kravet Archive” in the New York School of Interior Design Gallery before the show closes on November 27. This free public exhibition is an opportunity to interact with important textiles from many eras and regions. Curator Darling Green designed the exhibit to resemble the Kravet Archive in Bethpage, Long Island, complete with flat-files visitors can pull out to study and handle selections of important textiles, objects, and documents. Says Jeremy Johnston, one of the curators of the exhibit and principal and founder of Darling Green, “Working with the Kravet family, we understood that they don’t want the archive to be a museum, where samples are locked away, never to be touched. This is a living archive, intended to be a tool that designers interact with and take inspiration from.” Johnston estimates that Darling Green pulled a fraction—much less than 1%—of the collection for the show, as the Kravet Archive is a vast repository from textile design history.
An Archive for Makers
The story of the Kravet Archive begins with the immigration of Samuel Kravet to the United States in 1902. He set up shop as a tailor on Hester Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and came to understand that his customers were looking for trimmings for upholstery and curtains in addition to garments. He became a wholesaler of trimmings and eventually home textiles, founding S.Kravet & Sons in 1918. Since the beginning, the company that became Kravet Inc. was archiving and documenting its design process—drawings, invoices, swatches—as a way to achieve design continuity. Says Johnston, “If you are manufacturing fabrics over decades, you save swatches so that you can document, for example, the dyes for the color lots and dimensions of something that was popular ten years ago that you might want to bring back with a slightly different twist.”
As Kravet Inc. grew, it acquired other major producers, such as Lee Jofa, GP & J Baker, Brunschwig & Fils, and with them, their archives. “The Kravet family eventually began to understand that they’re in possession of not just something that has utility, but something that is historically important to scholars and students all over the world,” says Jeremy Johnston. “Scott Kravet (Principal Chief Creative Director of Kravet Inc.) in particular, begins to collect in order to expand the comprehensive nature of the archive, to include things that are not just European or part of Kravet’s manufacturing history. He acquires Oceanic objects, Japanese materials, and more as he looks to assemble the complete story of the world’s textile design and weaving tradition.”
Five Pieces Worth Seeing Up Close
With more than thirty-five thousand pieces to choose from in Kravet’s massive archives, Darling Green selected objects for the show based on several criteria: aesthetic impact, technical brilliance, cultural importance, or the potential to educate about design process, motif, or production method. Here are five objects you should not miss from the show.
Egyptian Textile Fragment, 500 B.C.E. (reproduction)
This embroidered piece of linen and wool might have been part of a shroud or a practice piece. It is pre-Christian, and the oldest piece in the Kravet archive.
Moreau & Deminiere Textile Design Reference Page, 19th Century
Look in the margins of this design document, where you will find all of the unique color dye names and amounts in French (“rouge 38%”), the height of the repeat, production dates and more. It may have been cut from a folio by a designer who wanted to reference it. This piece shows the massive influence of Persian and South Asian culture and pattern making on the European market in the late 19th Century beginning with the Great Exhibition in 1851.
Katagami Stencils, 1850-1912
These Japanese stencils are made from thinly pressed Mulberry bark paper and glue made of persimmons, and are reinforced with threads of silk or human hair. Stencils like this have been used since the 8th century as a method of transferring design to fabrics, especially to kimono.
Orinoka Mills Point Paper Drawing with Notations, Color Reference & Swatch, 1972
Kravet Inc. acquired a large quantity of 60’s and 70’s textiles when they purchased the archives of Orinoka Mills. Though we may not think of these items as rare historical documents now, someday they will be. Many of these items show the process and communication behind the designs. This original drawing painted on with gouache is layered with a tracing, notations from designers, a note from a salesperson, tags keyed to specific yarns that match colors, and a swatch of the final product. “If they ever wanted to produce this again, they have clear directions on how to do it,” says Jeremy Johnston.
Tree of Life, recent
Kravet Inc. made this contemporary Tree of Life block print in the ancient tradition, in Thailand, using 365 blocks for a single repeat. The pattern was originally produced in England but draws on Indian and Chinese motifs. Jeremy Johnston encourages designers to look at the backs of textiles like this to see the bleed-through, which have inspired many other designs at Kravet Inc.
A Resource for Students
For the Kravet family, documenting and preserving the history of the world’s textiles is a passion. They believe enriching the whole field of interior design and the decorative arts is a worthy mission, and the best way to do that is education. “Our goal with this exhibition is to share our collection with anyone currently studying design or textiles from a historical perspective,” says Ellen Kravet, Chairman of the Board of the New York School of Interior Design and Executive Vice President of Kravet Inc. “We hope to provide perspective on how designs from the past can readily be interpreted and produced for the future of design.”