There are many collections and other work in our industry drawing from the female-forward, “Me Too” themes of our current day. Collectively, these works celebrate and shine a spotlight on an important moment, or turning point, in our national discourse, although too many of them fall into a pink-hued, short-sighted bubble of a dated view of what “female” can mean.
By far one of our favorite projects to come to fruition is The Bauhaus Project by textile company Designtex. Shown at NeoCon this past June and now officially launching this fall, The Bauhaus Project perfectly coincides with the Bauhaus’ 100th anniversary; but, the most important story is the two women at the collection’s center – Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers.

From the collection notes: “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.”
We spoke with Catherine Stowell, Design Director at Designtex, to learn more about these talented Bauhaus designers, and the process of bringing their work to light today.
“At the core of it, we’re textile geeks, and we were all fans personally of these women, and all of the women at the Bauhaus,” said Ms. Stowell. “We started this project about two and a half years ago, and it was simply lucky timing that our launch would coincide with the Bauhaus’ 100th anniversary.”
“We felt like this group in the Bauhaus was special, and that they haven’t gotten their due and are not as celebrated as many of the Bauhaus men have been celebrated.”
How did they settle on those two designers, among many talented women designers at the Bauhaus weaving workshop?
“We began by searching for Gunta’s archive. Gunta was the eventual leader of the workshop and the only female master at the Bauhaus, so she was a logical starting point to work from.”
The team started simply – by doing an online search – and found www.guntastolzl.org, a website dedicated to her work. They reached out to the website creators to see if they could provide support. Turns out, the website was created and managed by Ariel Aloni, Gunta’s grandson. Ariel lives in NYC, and a visit to the Designtex studio was quickly set up. Ariel put Designtex in touch with Monika Stadler, his mother and Gunta’s daughter.

“Monika lived in the Netherlands, and so we went to visit her there and worked with her to begin developing the collection.”
How did these women come to start creating textiles at Bauhaus?
“Even though the Bauhaus was so progressive for its time, in the 1920s, it was still very much a product of the era in regards to the culture around women,” noted Ms. Stowell.
“The Bauhaus had utopian goals of pairing industry and art together. But, when a lot of women showed up to the Bauhaus to attend the school, they found that their options were very limited, to areas like ceramics and weaving – things that were then considered ‘women’s work’ – even though they came to the school with exceptional portfolios. There’s a quote attributed to Anni Albers, saying that she was a “reluctant weaver” – noting that it wasn’t her choice to do weaving.”
“But, the weaving workshop was one of the only workshops that actually did what they were all supposed to do – be profitable. As the weaving workshop evolved, these women were able to make it profitable – unlike most of the others. The weaving workshop funded a lot of the expansion of the Bauhaus. We really liked that part of this story.”
“We knew these women had to be pretty fierce, and they were doing pretty fabulous work. They were working on concepts behind technical textiles [textiles manufactured for non-aesthetic purposes, where function, technical and performance properties are the focus rather than their aesthetic characteristics” – Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles (7th ed.), by Tortora and Merkel]. They were exploring things like textiles with acoustical functions, which was way ahead of their time.”
How did the DesignTex collection begin to come into focus?
“We knew starting out that we didn’t want to do an exact historical reproduction of the original designs,” noted Ms. Stowell. “We knew we were going to execute these designs with modern technology, making full use of our digital technology and modern material capabilities.”
From collection notes: “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.”
“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.”
The collections include standalone tapestry pieces created without repeated yardage, as well as designs that have repeated yardage.









“From Anni’s side, we created a series of wallcovering textiles using our digital printing technology,” said Ms. Stowell. “We felt this was a good fit because the core ethos of the Bauhaus was intersecting technology with art, and if the Bauhaus existed today, it would likely have a digital workshop. We worked with the Albers Foundation and looked at her wall hangings to select designs to work from.”
“In the Black-White-Yellow design from Anni, getting the colors right was very challenging. The colors kept coming out flat, and it was just a little off every time we did it. We ended up going back and rebuilding our digital files to mimic the way her weaving process treated the coloring. When you look closely at the green in the textile, it’s actually achieved by weaving together black and yellow. We went back and rebuilt our digital files like that, and once we did, it was perfect. We were toggling between these old and new technologies, which was very fun, and a pretty unique experience.”












Opportunities abound to take part in Bauhaus’ 100th anniversary celebrations, but if you’re looking for something exceptional, and fancy a visit to Chicago this autumn, we’ll direct you to a two-day Bauhaus-inspired experience called “City as Lab: a Design Immersion in Chicago Bauhaus.”Taking place September 18-20 at theMART, the event focuses on László Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus in Chicago: “László Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus in Chicago was built on tactile and experiential learning. For the 100th anniversary of the global Bauhaus, what if we could manifest Moholy’s concept of the ‘School as Lab’ to the ‘City as Lab’?”
“This will be a 2-day immersion curated and produced by experienced designers:
>trace the historical roots of the Bauhaus to today’s most provocative examples of innovation in our city
>relish tangible experiences and intimate conversations with the best of Chicago designers, architects, artists and changemakers
>tell our city’s story through multi-layered and diverse perspectives
>explore the notion of “making as thinking” from the past to present
>find inspiration for your own work and make new connections in our ever-evolving city”
Said Ms. Stowell, “The Bauhaus still feels very relevant today, and still so modern – certainly bringing fine art into technology is a modern concern for designers today.”
However you choose to celebrate the Bauhaus anniversary, do take time to learn something new about it – there is no shortage of intriguing and instructive work, designers, and themes from this movement.