The Bauhaus Project – Designtex
In celebration of its centennial year, Designtex introduces The Bauhaus Project, launching this Fall. Within the framework of The Bauhaus Project, two separate collections exist: Designtex + Gunta Stölzl and Designtex + Anni Albers, two notable former Bauhaus students who played a crucial role in developing the weaving program at the Bauhaus. Through the experimentation and exploration of materials, construction and color, the women weavers created a pictorial and textural language of their own, strikingly different from traditional textile patterning and independent from painterly abstraction.
Gunta Stölzl
Gunta Stölzl’s original work, used as inspiration for Large Scale. Large Scale, Circle Jacquard, and Double Weave from The Bauhaus Project Collection.
Recreations of Gunta Stölzl’s seminal textile designs include patterns and textures exemplifying her rare ability to imagine and perform complex weave constructions. Each of the five woven textiles are inspired by or evocative of her original work or weaving practices, including her methodology of creating pattern repeats. Rather than simply repeating a pattern, Stölzl preferred to offset pattern elements to form a dynamic layout across the textile surface – this is visible in her 1926 drawing, Large Scale Geometric, that Designtex used as inspiration for the Large Scale Geometric pattern. Stölzl became the only female weaving master of the Bauhaus.
Anni Albers
Originally not interested in weaving, like the other female students of the Bauhaus, Anni Albers was forced to enroll in the weaving program. With Gunta Stölzl, as the weaving studios technical director, Albers began to appreciate the creativity and challenges of designing patterns and weaving, and began to produce her own geometric designs. Albers later went on to take over Gunta Stölzl’s role as Head of the Weaving Workshop. The three upholstery textiles in the Designtex + Anni Albers collection were developed in close collaboration with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation.
