The Reception of Wiener Werkstätte Fabrics in the United States in the Early 1920s

In keeping with the title “Tracing Wiener Werkstätte Textiles: Viennese Textiles from the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection,” eleven authors trace the history of the world-famous and innovative fabrics designed by the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop, or WW). Their studies focus on aspects such as the origins of textile and fashion design collections and archives in Austria, Switzerland, and the United States; the importance of Eastern European folk art, Japanese stencils, and didactic books on ornament of the late nineteenth century for WW textile patterns; the practical application of WW textiles in fashion, interior design, film, and theater sets; and the WW’s strategies for conquering new markets in the United States. Three of the contributions provide new insight into the work of previously little-noticed female artists: Hilda Schmid-Jesser, Maria Likarz-Strauss, and Mizzi Vogl.

The majority of the ten studies were written by curators of major archives or collections of WW objects, such as the MAK—Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna; and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Neue Galerie in New York. The impetus for the creation of this book, however, came from an institution that holds one of the largest collections of WW textiles in the United States: the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection (CTTSC) at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum in Washington, DC. The essays emerged from a three-day colloquium organized in April 2022 by the CTTSC in collaboration with the Institute of Art History and Museum Studies at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland and the University of Applied Arts Vienna: https://museum.gwu.edu/cotsen-textile-traces-colloquium-tracing-wiener-werkstatte-textiles.