DOI article:
Deubner, L.: Modern German embroidery
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43451#0056
Modern German Embroidery
BLACK SILK BAG. WORKED BY TONI METSCHER
(KUNSTGEWERBE-SCHULE, BIELEFELD)
ments were more numerous than successes. An
immense amount of time and labour was spent on
the discovery of new forms and colour-combinations,
on the simplification of ornamental accessories and
the testing of new technical methods, and yet the
practical results were quite meagre. And then the
little really good and exemplary work that emerged
from these efforts was appropriated by the trade in
its eagerness for new patterns, and by senseless
repetition worked up into those deplorable manu-
factures which, under the domination of the so-
called “ Jugend-stil,” have inundated the country.
It was only when the women artists who had
practised painting or sculpture began to turn their
attention more and more to the long-despised
field of industrial art, and especially to take up
embroidery in the conviction that here lurked
possibilities which would ever remain hidden from
their male rivals, that really sound work—work that
could truly be said to fulfil its purpose—made its ap-
pearance as the result of this, for the most part, vain
experimenting. In this branch of work, which for
ages past had been the peculiar province of the
female sex, men might have suggestions and ideas
to offer in matters pertaining to colour-schemes
EMBROIDERIES DESIGNED AND EXECUTED BY GERTRUD LORENZ
42
BLACK SILK BAG. WORKED BY TONI METSCHER
(KUNSTGEWERBE-SCHULE, BIELEFELD)
ments were more numerous than successes. An
immense amount of time and labour was spent on
the discovery of new forms and colour-combinations,
on the simplification of ornamental accessories and
the testing of new technical methods, and yet the
practical results were quite meagre. And then the
little really good and exemplary work that emerged
from these efforts was appropriated by the trade in
its eagerness for new patterns, and by senseless
repetition worked up into those deplorable manu-
factures which, under the domination of the so-
called “ Jugend-stil,” have inundated the country.
It was only when the women artists who had
practised painting or sculpture began to turn their
attention more and more to the long-despised
field of industrial art, and especially to take up
embroidery in the conviction that here lurked
possibilities which would ever remain hidden from
their male rivals, that really sound work—work that
could truly be said to fulfil its purpose—made its ap-
pearance as the result of this, for the most part, vain
experimenting. In this branch of work, which for
ages past had been the peculiar province of the
female sex, men might have suggestions and ideas
to offer in matters pertaining to colour-schemes
EMBROIDERIES DESIGNED AND EXECUTED BY GERTRUD LORENZ
42