Madelyn Shaw

Marguerita Mergentime's textiles reshaped the sensibility of the 20th-century American homeMarguerita Mergentime: American Textiles, Modern Ideas serves as a definitive source on this lauded American designer. Working in the heady milieu of 1930s New York, Mergentime (1894-1941) became best known for strikingly new printed fabrics, making her mark with tablecloths created to enliven American households with color, humor and entertainment. A member of the influential American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC), Mergentime was a woman whose career placed her alongside Donald Deskey and Russel Wright, as well as visionary architect Frederick Kiesler, who designed the furnishings in her New York apartment. Mergentime reshaped the sensibility of the 20th-century home at a time when modernism was being defined, contributing original textiles to Radio City Music Hall, Wright's American Way and the 1939 New York World's Fair. Articles and advertisements promoted her career across the United States. Today her Radio City designs can still be seen in the legendary venue, and her fabrics reside in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum at FIT; and the Allentown Art Museum. In this volume, essays highlight Mergentime's life and career, and over 150 images illustrate her designs that brought asymmetry, politics, folk art and quizzes to the table. Marguerita Mergentime: American Textiles, Modern Ideas reintroduces the woman who asked, "Are you allergic to meaningless uninspired patterns in printed cloths?" and places her squarely back on the scene.

Southern Tufts is the first book to highlight the garments produced by northwestern Georgia’s tufted textile industry. Though best known now for its production of carpet, in the early twentieth century the region was revered for its handtufted candlewick bedspreads, products that grew out of the Southern Appalachian Craft Revival and appealed to the vogue for Colonial Revival–style household goods. Soon after the bedspreads became popular, enterprising women began creating hand-tufted garments, including candlewick kimonos in the 1920s and candlewick dresses in the early 1930s. By the late 1930s, large companies offered machine-produced chenille beach capes, jackets, and robes. In the 1940s and 1950s, chenille robes became an American fashion staple. At the end of the century, interest in chenille fashion revived, fueled by nostalgia and an interest in recycling vintage materials. Chenille bedspreads, bathrobes, and accessories hung for sale both in roadside souvenir shops, especially along the Dixie Highway, and in department stores all over the nation. Callahan tells the story of chenille fashion and its connections to stylistic trends, automobile tourism, industrial developments, and U. S. history. The well-researched and heavily illustrated text presents a broad history of tufted textiles, as well as sections highlighting individual craftspeople and manufacturers involved with the production of chenille fashion.

"Traces the American silk industry, once the world's largest, through case studies of the Nonotuck (Northampton, Massachusetts), Haskell (Westbrook, Maine), and Mallinson (New York and Pennsylvania) silk companies. Examines entrepreneurs as well as history of technology and products from sewing-machine thread to mass-produced plain and high-fashion silks"--Provided by publisher.