of country gardens indoors, into cities.”) But Larsen was never a globetrotting tourist; he went abroad to work and develop new weaving techniques and aesthetics. By 1978, there were Larsen showrooms in 18 countries, and 80 production centers around the world. What the designer couldn’t find, he taught local craftsmen to make for him. In his memoir, he describes showing regional Siamese weavers how to switch from plain to twill weave, add polyester sewing thread, and make traditional ikat fabric in bolts long and heavy enough to fulfill corporate commissions. China, Mexico, New Zealand, Colombia, Haiti, Morocco, and Japan were among the countries that eventually produced Larsen textiles. One noted cross-culture collaboration was the curtain for the Wolf Trap Theater in Washington, DC. The fabric was woven in Swaziland by the English weaver Coral Stephens. (It should be noted that Larsen did not design alone; his firm employed established artists and weavers. Desiree Koslin, who teaches textile history in FIT’s graduate school and worked as a 10 hue | winter 2007 All Larsen textile designs are owned by Cowtan & Tout, Inc. Irving Solero challenge, to turn mass production into diversification. To give people a means to find their own style,” he told me. “To build diversified housing is very difficult, but of all the things in a house, fabric should be the best means of personalizing it. So I feel we need the broadest range of textiles—every style and pattern—good, bad, old, new. That is much more important than taste, because in a mass culture, reinforcing personal identity is the chief challenge.” By the end of our interview, I thought I understood Larsen’s contribution to the textile field—but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Why is it so important to surround ourselves with perceptible craft? What makes a handmade object special? When I was leaving, Larsen asked to examine my hat, a trilby by Paul Smith. He ran his fingers across the intricately woven straw. “Keep this for your grandchildren,” he told me, “so they can see what something handmade looks like.” I took my hat back and rode the elevator to the street. At a crosswalk, I stopped and touched the brim. Alone on a shelf, the hat would serve as an elegant example of craft. On my head, it made me who I was. The light turned, and I breathed in. For just a moment, I experienced myself as an organic woven structure, composed of an infinite number of elements. It was a lovely spring day. << << << << Samarkand, velvet and cotton; hand screen-printed, 1967. One of Larsen’s popular printed velvets, this fabric was inspired by the spring flowering in the Asiatic steppes. Irving Solero hours working out an extremely intricate design, but it was the company’s romantic, colored fabrics that often sold best. Still, Larsen forged ahead with his experiments. When The New York Times referred to him as “America’s most influential home furnishings textile designer,” it was for more than his innovations. He collaborated with architect Louis Kahn and created fabrics for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. (The house’s owner, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., curated the Good Design shows at the Museum of Modern Art and was a personal friend.) Larsen exhibitions were eventually held at, among other places, FIT, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre. He also authored or co-authored ten books on textile techniques, from Elements of Weaving to Interlacing to Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric. Though the firm was purchased by Cowtan & Tout in 1998, Larsen continues to consult for other textile companies, both here and abroad. Koslin is currently developing a book with him on tapestry. “Everyone has a different idea of what tapestry is,” Larsen told me, “so I’m out to set the world straight.” Matilda McQuaid called his books seminal. “He’s a very good writer, and he’s also a maker. That’s a pretty unusual combination.” His writing, she said, represented a significant contribution to the field. “He’s elevated textiles to an art form.” I asked Larsen, who was a founding board member of the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) and who curated exhibitions there and at MoMA, to describe the difference between art and craft. “Visual art is based on craft,” he said. “But craft media are all potentially art, and always have been. We designers also think of design as an art form. So perhaps art is the largest umbrella.” Several designers, curators, and scholars told me Larsen had anticipated developments in the industry, so I asked him what he thought about outsourcing. Human labor, he replied, can largely be eliminated from fabric making. “I realized 50 years ago, when America stopped letting masses of immigrants come in to sew, that something was going to change. Making garments without sewing would be the way of the future. The nylon stocking, for example, is seamless.” It surprised me that the champion of craft aesthetics would predict complete automation. Of course, some of Larsen’s work wasn’t made by hand; it only appeared that way. Could an object that merely looked handmade be equivalent to an authentic human creation? I thought of a display I’d seen at MoMA of Issey Miyake’s A-POC (A Piece of Cloth), which might be what Larsen had in mind. A-POC garments are produced to computer specifications and created by an industrial “printer.” The results look knitted, but an unsettling aura surrounds the process. In spite of some whimsical design details, I couldn’t get over the fact that the pieces were computer-generated. If this display prefigured something sinister, a kind of brave new world for textile design, Larsen didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. This is the sort of paradox he loves to contemplate: “That is the This upholstery fabric for Braniff Airlines, shown on mocked-up seats, was featured in a Larsen exhibition at the Louvre in 1979. Labyrinth, worsted cotton; warpfaced leno, 1981. This durable, lightweight fabric was often used as upholstery on private aircraft interiors. Irving Solero weaver for the company for five years, said Larsen was the driving creative force behind each design’s development.) The firm’s most famous work, Magnum (1972), machine-embroidered yarns over gleaming Mylar, was made to resemble Indian mirrored fabrics. An enormous curtain of it still hangs in Symphony Hall in Phoenix, AZ. Studying Happiness (1967) in The Museum at FIT’s textile collection, I could see why Larsen is sometimes called a modernist. Though the design was inspired by a Ming Dynasty robe, Chinese motifs hadn’t been plopped piecemeal into the design. It was the opposite of the “Chippendale pediment” that architect Philip Johnson incorporated into the apex of the AT&T building (considered a paradigmatic postmodern touch). While respecting the original source, Larsen had creatively transformed it into something new. Issey Miyake praised that quality in an email: “The indigenous textiles and handcrafts that Larsen collects become reinterpreted thanks to his exceptional talents and craftsmanship.” At FIT’s museum, I also saw Labyrinth (1981). Up close, its unusual warp-face weave means that long, vulnerable-looking vertical yarns are exposed. But from a short distance away, the warp yarns merge together to form a hovering scrim over the composition. The result is oddly vertiginous, as visually ambiguous as an optical illusion. I marveled at the mathematical ability it must have taken to assemble it on the loom. Koslin worked on Labyrinth. She said the weavers would spend Happiness, rayon, cotton, mohair; hand screen-printed, 1967. A hallmark of Larsen’s studio, this fabric was used for drapery, upholstery, and a jacquard rug pattern. Richard Goodbody. Courtesy of Cowtan & Tout, Inc. << Dorothy Beskind. Courtesy of Cowtan & Tout, Inc. Jack Lenor Larsen. www.ﬁtnyc.edu/hue 11