THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411040101
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN BARRY BURROWS, SPECIAL TO HOME & GARDEN
LENGTH: Long : 169 lines
The Arts and Crafts Movement is well known for the overall naturalistic look that fits easily into decorating trends of the 1990s: Mission oak furniture, stained glass on windows and lamps, neutral walls and simple designs with earthy colors.
A few fans of that period dedicated to craftsmen, which ushered out the Victorian era and lasted from about 1876 to 1916, have found their way to the piles of specialized needlework at G. Carr ltd. Art and Antiques shop in downtown Norfolk.
An expert and lecturer in the field of antique linens, Geraldine Carr has a special fondness for the arts and crafts linens, with their simple and charming representations of the period's fabulous designs, produced by greats such as Frank Lloyd Wright, William Morris and Gustav Stickley.
Arts and crafts linens differ sharply from the intricate embroideries laced with gold thread or the delicately knotted laces that typify the term ``antique linens.'' The philosophy of Stickley and other leaders in the Arts and Crafts Movement stood against excessive detail and color. With subdued ornament, the focus became strong, clean lines and subtle, harmonious colors.
The era represented a revolution provoked by 9-to-5 jobs, assembly lines and the dehumanizing effects of the early Industrial Age. The Arts and Crafts Movement, begun in England and embraced by the American elite after the country's first centennial, represented a return to naturalness. The movement celebrated the dappled color of natural foliage and grainy wood, rather than the bright gloss of plastic, and it honored the homespun textures of a craftsman's loom, rather than the methodical weaves of industrial machines.
Carr lectures nationwide on the textiles produced during this period, which also saw the rise of famous craft enterprises such as Rookwood Pottery and Tiffany & Co. glass and other art. The textiles, however, were produced both by craftsmen and by homemakers following pre-printed patterns distributed by catalog companies such as Royal Society Fluffe in England and Stickley's Craftsman Workshops in America.
Carr routinely carries piles of both good and bad examples of Arts and Crafts linens to her lectures. ``So many of the women who did this needlework couldn't shake off their Victorian mentality,'' said Carr reprovingly. Lace borders, overdone needlework and busy designs are bad effects transposed on the mail-order kits.
She said crochet borders can always be taken off, so those collecting Arts and Crafts linens should first look at the linen backgrounds - do they seem coarse and homespun and are the colors natural and somewhat dark, as if vegetable dyes were used? If so, they may be the real thing.
Her advice, then, is to study the embroidery. ``The stitching screams,'' she said, characteristic of the bold designs of the period. But it is not overdone. ``Less is best,'' Carr said.
The Arts and Crafts Movement designs are spare, yet they are powerful shapes with colors that harmonize in nature. Even the boldest red or blue hues are used as understated ornament, as much in place ``as a flower in the grass,'' to use the words of Stickley. Many such linens decorate Carr's homes on the Eastern Shore and on Mowbray Arch in Norfolk, and the selection of English and American Arts and Crafts linens in her shop are true masterpieces.
A set of linen bags, one of which can look wonderfully trendy at the foot of a Mission bed, display the best in American and English Arts and Crafts design. On one simple drawstring bag, squares in bright blue and red and curves in soft sage green suggest flowers and leaves. Designed by H.E. Varren.
Table scarves with delightful designs, including one with two tulips on rough, grayish linen, embroidered with a rose-colored punch stitch and accented by leaves of the softest green hue. Another is embroidered with purple and blue dragonflies hovering above brown and green cattails.
A large pillow airbrushed in green and rust with a hint of gold satin floss outlining the shapes of leaves. The design is busy, but the colors are restful. This one is dated 1906 and produced by Brainerd & Armstrong of England.
There is a spiritedness about these linens that shows through, despite the efforts at restraint. For Carr, they connect her to her childhood in an English manor house and her later years of robust freedom after refusing to return home, at age 13, from a vacation in Los Angeles.
Now a widow with a grown son, she often travels the country appraising and/or buying antiques. When Sotheby's isn't asking her to appraise artifacts for auction and regional clubs aren't demanding lectures, Carr prefers to surround herself with space and water at her shore home. On workdays at her Norfolk shop she retires to her downtown townhouse which, incidentally, is an English tudor style.
The linens, Carr said, represent a philosophy of ``life is art in the craftsman spirit.'' And while her shop may be full of furniture, painting and sculptures from various classical periods, it is a love of old cloth that blankets her heart.
Carr said sometimes her passion is a handicap. ``You know it's hard,'' she said. ``I can't go anywhere without my own pillow - down, of course - and a pillowcase of old, I mean old, wonderfully old, linen. It's just the only way I can sleep.''
She may be permitted this eccentricity, considering that she also travels with some of this country's best linen works from the day of Stickley. Her suitcase may as well be a treasure chest - a good piece of work tends to be priced between $100 and $2,400. Carr has found some prime examples, however, in estate auctions where all household linens are basically dumped on her at a few dollars a box.
Of course, there are knockoffs. That is true especially, Carr says, now that Ethan Allen and other premiere furniture galleries are designing in the old mission style and Arts and Crafts mode. Some customers are extending the look with coordinating linens. The ``craftsman'' look is sold in catalogs and usually carried as one line among many by fabric manufacturers such as Waverly and Brunschwig & Fils. The Craftsman Curtains and Linens catalog even offers the original designs pre-printed on cloth in make-it-yourself kits. Prices start at $175.
Carr has a problem with the cloth used in modern kits. ``They just don't make the right kind of linen anymore,'' she moaned. The machine-loomed cloth choices don't deliver the bumps, imperfections and the contrast between warp and weft threads that are hand-woven into fabric.
The best way to make a choice on draperies, bedspread, tablecloths and even upholstery is to know what the turn-of-the-century craftsmen favored. An irregular, open texture such as that of linen or translucent cotton is best. It provides the dull, sympathetic background that best shows off any touch of decoration, as do natural stained woodwork, rough plaster walls of uneven color and leather or neutral upholstery.
Other materials offered in the Stickley catalog at the turn of the century included canvas, linen velour, mandarin silk, madras, etamine (an open mesh), crepe and blue and white farm (a puffy weave like matelasse).
A common border or edging on the work was macrame, in which many women were skilled. The most true to the form, however, is an edging of fringe from the same fabric. Often the fringe was gathered and knotted into tassels.
The colors were predominantly shades of foliage green, or autumn tones such as golden brown or a reddish bronze. There was room in the designs for flashes of blues and reds. The hues, however, were of a certain naturalness, as if dyed from vegetable colorings.
Various stitches were used, but the satin stitch predominated. Often the fabric was airbrushed as well as embroidered, and the English liked to add a few beads or jewels to accentuate a flower or a dragonfly. Satin floss embroidery was sometimes shunned entirely, and the linen featured a border of block printing, very spare and beautiful.
The designs were often stylized and abstract, with curls and flourishes suggestive of nature. But the most famous designs include detailed renditions of pine cones, seed pods and flowers such as tulip, daylily, magnolia, lotus, poppy and ginkgo.
Whether decorators are collecting true antiques or merely re-creating the look of the Arts and Crafts Movement, they follow the principles of harmonious furnishings, a respect for materials and restraint in the use of color. It is the linens that provide the joyful bit of decoration that makes the effort worthwhile. ILLUSTRATION: JIM WALKER/Staff color photos
This American table scarf dating from the Arts and Crafts Movement
recently sold for $140.
This American-made linen bag offers an excellent example of the
refined design and texture of Arts and Crafts linen.
Bold embroidery on plain linen is characteristic of the movement.
From left: a simple tablecloth designed in America by Gustav
Stickley; a table scarf by the Englishman C. R. Mackintosh; and an
American-made linen bag.
A fringed table scarf exemplifies the subdued ornament and subtle,
harmonious colors of the period.
Photo
JIM WALKER/Staff photo
Geraldine Carr, owner of G. Carr ltd. Art and Antiques shop in
Norfolk, sits with a sampling of linens made during the Arts and
Crafts Movement.
by CNB