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Technique of decorating textiles with motifs cut from one material, which are attached or ‘applied’ to another with embroidery stitches (see Textile, §III, 2).
D. Blum and others: ‘Nineteenth-century Appliqué Quilts’ [with catalogue]’, Bulletin: Philadelphia Museum of Art., 85 (Fall 1989), pp. 3–45 M. Singer and M. Spyrou...Article
Thomas Dacosta Kaufmann
(b ?Milan, 1527; d Milan, July 11, 1593).
Italian painter, draughtsman and tapestry designer, active also in Austria and Bohemia. He came from a distinguished Milanese family that included a number of archbishops of the city; his father was the painter Biagio Arcimboldo. Giuseppe is first documented in 1549, working with his father for Milan Cathedral; he received payments until 1558 for supplying paintings, designs for an altar baldacchino and stained-glass windows for the cathedral: the Story of Lot and the Life of St Catherine in the south transept windows are usually attributed to him. He collaborated with Giuseppe Meda in designing the gonfalone of St Ambrose in Milan, probably sometime soon after 1558. In 1556 he received a commission to paint the south wall and vault of the south transept of Monza Cathedral, also in Lombardy, a work that must have been completed by 1562. Portions of a fresco of the Tree of Jesse on the south wall there can be attributed to him. In ...
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Diane Maglio
(b Piacenza, July 11, 1934).
Italian fashion designer. Armani was dubbed the ‘Sexy Tailor’ by the American fashion press for sartorial innovations he introduced in menswear. He brought sensual drape to traditional suit coats by eliminating rigid interlinings that had shaped and restricted men’s clothing in the 1970s. To complement his new softly-tailored coats, he created short, supple, collared shirts and textural, patterned ties. Armani’s impact on menswear went beyond unstructured sewing techniques to include a serene colour palette inspired by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. The neutral earth tones included an inventive grey–beige (‘greige’), moss, mushroom and smoky grey–blue, tones not seen before in menswear. Armani claimed to be ‘the stylist without colour’. Armani also brought a feminine touch to menswear and eventually expanded his design aesthetic to women’s clothing, bringing a powerful look to women’s fashion. His minimal modernism in cut and fit, while retaining maximum impact in silhouette and colour, stimulated the fashion imagination of Hollywood, retailers, journalists and customers of both sexes....
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Maria Natália Correia Guedes
Portuguese centre of carpet production; also the name applied to carpets made elsewhere in the same tradition. Arraiolos carpets are embroidered with strands of thick wool, or more rarely silk, on linen, jute or hemp canvas, using a large-eyed needle and a long-armed cross stitch, which gives the effect of braiding. The reverse side of the carpet shows no trace of finishing off and appears to be hatched. The pattern is drawn on squared paper, and then the main points of reference are marked on the canvas by counting the threads. The border and all the motifs are first outlined and then filled; the background is embroidered last. The carpet is finished with a continuous plain or polychrome edging of looped or cut fringe. In the days when natural dyes were used, the colours were predominantly red, blue and yellow, obtained from brazil-wood, indigo, dyer’s weed or spurge respectively. Originally the carpets were used to cover the floor of the hall or bedroom in noble houses and were surrounded by a strip of polished wooden floor....
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Suzanne Tise
Descriptive term applied to a style of decorative arts that was widely disseminated in Europe and the USA during the 1920s and 1930s. Derived from the style made popular by the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, the term has been used only since the late 1960s, when there was a revival of interest in the decorative arts of the early 20th century. Since then the term ‘Art Deco’ has been applied to a wide variety of works produced during the inter-war years, and even to those of the German Bauhaus. But Art Deco was essentially of French origin, and the term should, therefore, be applied only to French works and those from countries directly influenced by France.
The development of the Art Deco style, or the Style moderne as it was called at the time, closely paralleled the initiation of the 1925...
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Michèle Lavallée
[Fr.: ‘new art’]
Decorative style of the late 19th century and the early 20th that flourished principally in Europe and the USA. Although it influenced painting and sculpture, its chief manifestations were in architecture and the decorative and graphic arts, the aspects on which this survey concentrates. It is characterized by sinuous, asymmetrical lines based on organic forms; in a broader sense it encompasses the geometrical and more abstract patterns and rhythms that were evolved as part of the general reaction to 19th-century historicism. There are wide variations in the style according to where it appeared and the materials that were employed.
Art Nouveau has been held to have had its beginnings in 1894 or 1895. A more appropriate date would be 1884, the year the progressive group Les XX was founded in Belgium, and the term was used in the periodical that supported it, Art Moderne: ‘we are believers in Art Nouveau’. The origin of the name is usually attributed to ...
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Alan Crawford
Informal movement in architecture and the decorative arts that championed the unity of the arts, the experience of the individual craftsman, and the qualities of materials and construction in the work itself.
The Arts and Crafts Movement developed in the second half of the 19th century and lasted well into the 20th, drawing its support from progressive artists, architects and designers, philanthropists, amateurs, and middle-class women seeking work in the home. They set up small workshops apart from the world of industry, revived old techniques, and revered the humble household objects of pre-industrial times. The movement was strongest in the industrializing countries of northern Europe and in the USA, and it can best be understood as an unfocused reaction against industrialization. Although quixotic in its anti-industrialism, it was not unique; indeed it was only one among several late 19th-century reform movements, such as the Garden City movement, vegetarianism, and folksong revivals, that set the Romantic values of nature and folk culture against the artificiality of modern life....
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Gordon Campbell
Modern term for a type of embroidery made in Italy and elsewhere; there is no ascertainable connection with the Italian city of Assisi. The pattern, outlined in black or red with a double running or Holbein stitch, is left blank, and the ground is worked in cross stitch. The stitch is identical on both sides, so the fabric is reversible....
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Pamela Elizabeth Grimaud
[Bernard, Augusta]
(b 1886; d 1946).
French fashion designer. Augustabernard is known for her understated, elegant garments, whose subtlety belies a mastery of technique. Hailed as a ‘sculptor of cloth’ and a ‘classic modern’, Augustabernard was considered among the most innovative and skilled couturières of her generation.
Augustabernard was born in Provence in the south of France and began her fashion career by creating reproductions of designs by the leading couturiers of the day. In 1919 she opened her Paris salon in the Rue de Rivoli. At that time there were two competing houses using the name Bernard, and it is likely that because of this Augustabernard joined her first name and surname together, creating a griffe or signature label synonymous with exclusivity. In 1928 she moved to 3, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, bringing with her a selective and devoted clientele. By the early 1930s Augustabernard was receiving coverage in the French and international fashion press, achieving success with her simple, yet innovative designs....
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Jennifer Wearden
English town in Devon, situated on the River Axe, known as a centre of carpet production from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th. In 1755 Thomas Whitty (d 1792), a weaver from Axminster, visited Pierre Parisot’s carpet workshop in Fulham, London. An apprentice showed him the workshop, and on his return to Axminster Whitty built a large vertical loom, taught his daughters to tie the symmetrical or Ghiordes knot (see Carpet, §I, 1) and began to produce carpets. In 1757 he submitted a carpet measuring 4.9×3.8 m to the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded a joint prize with Thomas Moore (c. 1700–1788; see Carpet, §II, 2, (iii)) of Chiswell Street, London. Whitty valued his carpet at £15 and the Society ruled it the best carpet in proportion to its price. In 1758 he was asked to submit three carpets and shared the prize with ...
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Scot McKendrick
(fl Arras, 1419–64).
Burgundian painter and tapestry designer. He was a wealthy member of the Arras bourgeoisie and seems to have been a very successful artist. His first recorded work was the painting of mainly heraldic devices in memory of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, at the abbey of St Vaast in 1419. The work was undertaken in such a short time and for a sufficiently large payment that he has been considered the head of an important workshop. In 1426 he was again paid for heraldic painting at Arras, and in 1454 he shared with Jacques Daret the supervision of the painting by Robert de Moncheaux (fl 1454–68) of the tomb of the abbot of St Vaast, Jean du Clercq (untraced).
Bauduin is best known for his execution of the designs for a set of tapestries of the History of Gideon (destr. 1794), considered the most outstanding tapestries owned by ...
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Molly Sorkin
(b Getaria, Jan 21, 1895; d Valencia, March 24, 1972).
Spanish fashion designer, active in Paris. Based in Paris from 1937 to 1968, Balenciaga was a modernist couturier whose designs ranged from the austere to the romantic. His uncompromising vision was defined by his quest for perfection in cut, proportion and construction. Influenced in part by the historical art and culture of his native Spain, Balenciaga’s style was often ahead of its time even as it slowly evolved over more than 40 years. Balenciaga dressed an élite group of women who understood and appreciated how his designs took shape on the body (see fig.). He used minimal understructure, instead relying on the fabric, manipulating it into streamlined suits or voluminous evening dresses. Even the most abstract silhouettes retained a soft quality that was flattering to many figures. Like his friends and fellow couturiers Madeleine Vionnet and Coco Chanel, his work has had a profound influence on 20th and 21st century fashion....
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Lourdes Font
(Alexandre)
(b Saint–Jean-de-Maurienne, May 18, 1914; d Paris, June 29, 1982).
French fashion designer (see fig.). Balmain was born in the Savoie region of France to a family engaged in various branches of the fashion industry. His father, who died when he was seven, was a wholesale textile merchant and his mother and aunts kept a fashion boutique. Although he was always drawn to a career in fashion, his mother hoped that he would enter another field, and allowed him to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1932.
In Paris, Balmain sketched original fashion designs and offered them for sale to couture houses, hoping to be hired. In 1934 he was hired by Edward Molyneux, the couturier he most admired. Balmain claimed that from Molyneux he learned to strip designs down to their essentials. However, he was not given much opportunity to contribute to the house’s collections. The talented but inexperienced Balmain was in need of training, but Molyneux, who already had John Cavanagh and Mitzah Bricard as assistant designers, did not have much need for him. Late in ...
