Tracing Wiener Werkstätte Textiles: Viennese Textiles from the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, Régine Bonnefoit / Marie-Eve Celio-Scheurer
Tracing Wiener Werkstätte Textiles opens a window into the finely woven world of the early 20th-century Viennese textile avant-garde, transforming yards of cloth into artifacts of modernist ideal, social ambition and design experimentation. This volume doesn’t treat fabric as mere decoration — it reveals cloth as archive: patterns, colours, stitches are read as evidence of cultural exchange, artisan labor, and aesthetic ambition. The book foregrounds lesser-known female textile artists, and unmasks how the aesthetics of folk art, Japanese prints and pan-European ornamental textbooks converged in the hands of the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932). What emerges is a picture of textiles not as passive surfaces, but as active participants in the shaping of modern identity — interiors, fashion, theater, cinema, and everyday domestic spaces.
Visually, the book is lush and generous, offering detailed images of archive textile samples — many from the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection — with close attention to weave, dye, scale and wear. Its essays draw the reader into the weave of social history: how pattern books circulated, how “folk” motifs were re-interpreted for urban consumption, how women designers navigated both craft and commerce, and how these fabrics resonated beyond Austria to influence global fashion and interiors. For anyone inclined toward slow-looking — who wants to feel, not just see, the grain of cloth — this book is a rare and richly contextualised invitation.
About the Author
Régine Bonnefoit is a long-time scholar of European modernism, with known scholarship in Expressionism, the Wiener Werkstätte and early 20th-century textile and graphic arts.
Marie‑Eve Celio‑Scheurer brings a background in art history, curatorship and collection stewardship — she formerly led the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center at George Washington University / The Textile Museum.
Publication date: 2023
Publisher: Birkhäuser (Basel)
Pages: 208
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 17.27 x 2.03 x 24.38 cm
ISBN: 9783035627640
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Description
Tracing Wiener Werkstätte Textiles opens a window into the finely woven world of the early 20th-century Viennese textile avant-garde, transforming yards of cloth into artifacts of modernist ideal, social ambition and design experimentation. This volume doesn’t treat fabric as mere decoration — it reveals cloth as archive: patterns, colours, stitches are read as evidence of cultural exchange, artisan labor, and aesthetic ambition. The book foregrounds lesser-known female textile artists, and unmasks how the aesthetics of folk art, Japanese prints and pan-European ornamental textbooks converged in the hands of the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932). What emerges is a picture of textiles not as passive surfaces, but as active participants in the shaping of modern identity — interiors, fashion, theater, cinema, and everyday domestic spaces.
Visually, the book is lush and generous, offering detailed images of archive textile samples — many from the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection — with close attention to weave, dye, scale and wear. Its essays draw the reader into the weave of social history: how pattern books circulated, how “folk” motifs were re-interpreted for urban consumption, how women designers navigated both craft and commerce, and how these fabrics resonated beyond Austria to influence global fashion and interiors. For anyone inclined toward slow-looking — who wants to feel, not just see, the grain of cloth — this book is a rare and richly contextualised invitation.
About the Author
Régine Bonnefoit is a long-time scholar of European modernism, with known scholarship in Expressionism, the Wiener Werkstätte and early 20th-century textile and graphic arts.
Marie‑Eve Celio‑Scheurer brings a background in art history, curatorship and collection stewardship — she formerly led the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center at George Washington University / The Textile Museum.
Publication date: 2023
Publisher: Birkhäuser (Basel)
Pages: 208
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 17.27 x 2.03 x 24.38 cm
ISBN: 9783035627640
