Exhibition of 'Twenties European Textile Design'

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Review

From 12th September until 15th November 1998, Chemnitz Municipal Art Collections   allowed insights into their art and industry collection that was established exactly one hundred years ago as a model collection for the Saxon textile industry.
Comprising nearly 20,000 items in total, the collection includes samples in wood, metal, glass, ceramics and china made from 1928 onwards; its main focus, however, has always been the collection of textile samples that was set up in 1898, and primarily consists of fabric designs for interior decorating (home furnishings and furnishing    fabrics). Aside from fabrics of German and Austrian origin there are also some from the UK, France and Italy.
This international important collection was created almost simultaneously with the Vienna Secession (1897) and the year the Vereinigte Werkstätten were founded in Munich. It was a time of major reforming movements inspired by the success of the British Arts & Crafts Movement and sur- rounded by a blossoming Art Nouveau; the German Werkbund was formed just a few years later.
The Chemnitz show made one thing quite clear: in the second half of the 19th century and until the 1930s, there was an awareness for the necessity of contemporary fabric collections. The officials from politics and the textile industry who opened the exhibition so whole-heartedly did not say one word about why they are no longer prepared to fund the continuation of such collections.
As in the old days, we still need a sleuth's sense and much historic and technical know-ledge in order to update contemporary fabric collections for educational purposes. One day it will lead to disaster if   European institutions no longer take that trouble. We are in the process of losing part of our textile cultural memory.
We might find consolation in the fact that at least the fabrics produced up to World War II continue to slumber in our museums' storerooms, and that some of them will be documented in catalogues on occa-sions such as the present one. The catalogue Twenties European Textile Design contains 200 colour illustrations that, by nature, will only show the exhibits' fabric quality in a very limited way. Its 160 pages also include some text contributions on the type and extent of the textile collection by the museum's textile curator, Ms. Katharina Metz; a highly critical contribution about textile design training by Wieland Poser; a directory of the fabrics illustrated; artists' biographies; and a list of historic companies, workshops and schools.                           Dietmar Laue

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