The thousands of textiles currently housed at the Brooklyn Museum are prime examples of the vast glo

The thousands of textiles currently housed at the Brooklyn Museum are prime examples of the vast global history of textile making and sewing traditions in New York City. In participation with New York Textile Month, we will be showcasing one textile per day for the month of September.  While difficult to narrow it down to only thirty textiles, we think these works are best at weaving narratives about topics such as innovations in the textile industry, craft and the beauty of the handmade, textiles from legendary designers like Frank Lloyd Wright and Anni Albers, as well as textiles with a sense of humor. Did you know that PeeWee Herman had a line of textiles made? This amusing textile is a contemporary interpretation of a long-lived traditional American subject—the cowboy. Rendered in a sketch-like, cartoon style as though drawn in white outline on a dark-blue “chalkboard” are various figures of western characters, some on hobby horses instead of realistic animals: Wild Bill, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Hopalong Cassidy, Jesse James, Lone Ranger, and Sundance Kid. The names are printed in red and so the combination lends the textile a jingoistic quality as well. The textile was printed by the Riegel Textile Company, founded in 1905 by Benjamin D. Riegel, in Ware Shoals, North Carolina, and was known for producing middle-market novelty textiles. Ware Shoals was another “factory town,” in which the manufacturing plant, the workers’ housing, schools, stores, and places of public entertainment were all built by Riegel. The company even owned a herd of cows and produced ice cream in a special plant for the workers. The factory also built the water and sewer systems and thereby paternalistically controlled the lives of the workers nearly completely. Therefore when the plant closed in 1985, the town was essentially abandoned. The machinery was moved to Mexico and a new factory established with a local labor force. Riegel continues until today as a division in name only of Mount Vernon Mills.Posted by Barry R. Harwood, Lark Morgenstern, and Caitlin Crews -- source link
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