DOI Heft:
No. 235 (October 1912)
DOI Artikel:Deubner, L.: Modern German embroidery
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21158#0070
Modern German Embroidery
WALL-HANGING, WITH MOTIVES
SELECTED FROM THE PARABLES.
WORKED BY ADELHEID WII.LICH, A
PUPIL OF THE KUNSTGEWERBE-SCHULE,
BIELEFELD
Lorenz, who received her artistic training at this
institution and has resided for the past few years at
Dresden, where in addition to her own workshops
she conducts a permanent exhibition and sale-room
(see p. 46). A refreshing naturalness of invention
is united in her work with a fine feeling for
proportion and surface effects. But it is not so
much the concordance of line and colour as the
adaptation of the design to the particular technique
which gives character and value to these em-
broideries of hers. In her selection of motives
she does not allow herself to be led into those
extravagances which a lively fantasy is apt to
engender, but in the design itself keeps in view the
technical possibilities which confront her in working
up her material for some specific purpose. And
these possibilities she knows how to exploit not
only with good taste but with a rare practical sense,
for with her it is always a point of cardinal import-
ance that her creations shall not be mere show-
pieces or dazzling displays of colour, but things
which, while pleasing as regards material and colour,
shall serve for daily use. She therefore prefers
material of the simplest character, such as coarse
linen in every variety of tint, and the simplest
technical method, that of the crank machine, and
therewith achieves very surprising effects.
The same spirit of educational thoroughness
dominates the State School of Industrial Art at
Hamburg, which has Prof. Richard Meyer for its
head. Here all traces of the meretricious ornament
that was once in vogue, all imitative practices and
all antiquated methods and systems of teaching,
have been swept aside with a broom of iron. Draw-
ing from memory is practised, and not only drawing
but the reproduction of street scenes, landscapes,
human and animal figures, and plant-forms by means
of coloured paper which the pupils cut out and paste
down—a method which trains the eye to observe
clearly, to grasp the essential characteristics of an
object, and at the same time promotes the faculty
of distinguishing the harmonies and dissonances of
colour, and thus leads up to the formulation of
effective decorative schemes that are neither artificial
nor bizarre. Evidence of this is afforded by the
work accomplished in the embroidery section
conducted by Friiulein Maria Brinkmann. A lively
fantasy is shown in the treatment of motives, and
in such a work as the embroidered panel illustrated
on p. 40, which was designed as a wall decoration,
this fantasy is expressed with a quite personal note.
At the Industrial Art School at Bielefeld the
embroidery class has for some years been success-
fully conducted by Fraulein Gertrud Kleinhempel,
WALL-HANGING, WITH MOTIVES
SELECTED FROM THE PARABLES.
WORKED BY ADELHEID WII.LICH, A
PUPIL OF THE KUNSTGEWERBE-SCHULE,
BIELEFELD
Lorenz, who received her artistic training at this
institution and has resided for the past few years at
Dresden, where in addition to her own workshops
she conducts a permanent exhibition and sale-room
(see p. 46). A refreshing naturalness of invention
is united in her work with a fine feeling for
proportion and surface effects. But it is not so
much the concordance of line and colour as the
adaptation of the design to the particular technique
which gives character and value to these em-
broideries of hers. In her selection of motives
she does not allow herself to be led into those
extravagances which a lively fantasy is apt to
engender, but in the design itself keeps in view the
technical possibilities which confront her in working
up her material for some specific purpose. And
these possibilities she knows how to exploit not
only with good taste but with a rare practical sense,
for with her it is always a point of cardinal import-
ance that her creations shall not be mere show-
pieces or dazzling displays of colour, but things
which, while pleasing as regards material and colour,
shall serve for daily use. She therefore prefers
material of the simplest character, such as coarse
linen in every variety of tint, and the simplest
technical method, that of the crank machine, and
therewith achieves very surprising effects.
The same spirit of educational thoroughness
dominates the State School of Industrial Art at
Hamburg, which has Prof. Richard Meyer for its
head. Here all traces of the meretricious ornament
that was once in vogue, all imitative practices and
all antiquated methods and systems of teaching,
have been swept aside with a broom of iron. Draw-
ing from memory is practised, and not only drawing
but the reproduction of street scenes, landscapes,
human and animal figures, and plant-forms by means
of coloured paper which the pupils cut out and paste
down—a method which trains the eye to observe
clearly, to grasp the essential characteristics of an
object, and at the same time promotes the faculty
of distinguishing the harmonies and dissonances of
colour, and thus leads up to the formulation of
effective decorative schemes that are neither artificial
nor bizarre. Evidence of this is afforded by the
work accomplished in the embroidery section
conducted by Friiulein Maria Brinkmann. A lively
fantasy is shown in the treatment of motives, and
in such a work as the embroidered panel illustrated
on p. 40, which was designed as a wall decoration,
this fantasy is expressed with a quite personal note.
At the Industrial Art School at Bielefeld the
embroidery class has for some years been success-
fully conducted by Fraulein Gertrud Kleinhempel,