Pattern design once was a well-respected vocation within the textile sector. The pattern designer or ‘dessinateur’ was the first craftsman involved in the production of splendid silk fabrics for, amongst other things, liturgical vestments. How did one become a pattern designer? And why has this once established vocation turned into oblivion?

The road towards pattern design

In the mid-19th century, the silk industry in and around Krefeld was made up of around 90 companies which required an increasing number of different skilled craftsmen. Therefore, both industry and small trades called for the establishment of a textile college, where the subjects appropriate to the production and processing of fabric, in particular silk, would be taught. As a result, the “Crefeld Höheren Webschule” (Krefeld Textile College) was set up in 1855. This was the only vocational college focussing on silk production in Germany and it soon gained a very good reputation. It was associated with a valuable textile collection right from the time it was established. Both the historical and the contemporary sample collections provided the basic requirements for design work and were a source of inspiration in particular for pattern designers.

This college, which was re-named “Textilingenieurschule” (Textile Engineering College) after the Second World War, provided the ideal opportunity for young men and women in Krefeld to learn an interesting and respected vocation, particularly if they had artistic talent and dexterity. This was indeed so in the case of Dieter Blatt and Günter Göbels, now active volunteers at Haus der Seidenkultur (HdS). As youngsters, both of them enjoyed drawing, were creative and were encouraged by their families to undertake the appropriate vocational training.[2] Today – over 50 years later – they are still happy to demonstrate their skills to visitors at Haus der Seidenkultur.

For the three important crafts required for Jacquard weaving, the basic curriculum took 3 years to complete and was very varied. The theoretical part alone included weave theory, material science, point paper design as well as life drawing, morphology and chromatics, composition and pattern design. The two HdS volunteers also explained that free-hand drawing, which was essential for design, was taught and practised during evening classes.

Having completed the basic training, the apprentices could choose one of the three specific crafts, namely pattern design, point paper design or Jacquard card punching. At the time in the mid-20th century, there was a clear differentiation between the three crafts. Once the apprentices had completed their training, some of them went on to work in independent technical workshops comprising 3 to 30 experts which served small silk production companies including weaving workshops for ecclesiastical textiles, whilst others were employed in technical workshops at the large textile factories in Krefeld and the surrounding area.

From established crafter to computer expert

The vocation of pattern designer was officially recognised on 4th November 1949. However, as a result of the increasing mechanisation and the re-structuring of vocational training in the textile sector, the vocation designation was abolished again on 1st August 1978. Nowadays the tasks of the pattern designer and point paper designer are all carried out by computer by one single expert, referred to as a “Textile Pattern and Product Designer”.

Pattern design was one of the most respected crafts in this sector. The pattern designer definitely needed to be creative and before starting on the design he had to carefully take into account many different aspects of the fabric to be produced – quality, final use, colour composition, pattern size and repeat.

Not only had he to consider historical patterns, former and modern art trends (e.g. Bauhaus), customer specifications but also to create his own abstract designs. He was responsible for determining the optical appearance of the fabric, had to be aware of the effect the choice of weave would have and take into account the chromaticity of the finished fabric. The number of colours used in the design depended to a large extent on the final product. For a print design, there was virtually no limit to the number of colours which could be used, but for a woven pattern the number of colours was determined by the actual production conditions. In the course of the 20th century, more and more synthetic colours and fabrics were introduced which needed to be handled differently to natural colours and fabrics.

In the case of Jacquard weaving, the pattern repeat is determined by the size of the loom harness. The maximum repeat width which the pattern designer has to take into account depends on the warp thread density per centimetre and the harness repeat.

Having considered all the above, the pattern designer went to work sketching the pattern as a picture which he then coloured according to the requirements of the finished fabric using brushes, paint and coloured crayons. For damask tablecloths which are white-in-white, the pattern design was produced in various tones of grey. The pattern designer also determined the weave to be used, as this gave the design its final character. Then he handed it over to the point paper designer for the next stage in the preparation prior to weaving.

Written by Cynthia Beisswenger and Andreas Deling (HdS)

References

When Thibaut Nussbaumer fell from a horse in his teenage years, he had no idea at the time that it would set him on a path to becoming a distinguished member of an exciting new wave of artists working in one of the more elusive craft-making niches: glassblowing. His arm broken from the fall, Thibaut received doctor’s orders to employ his hands with some tactile tasks in the service of regaining his dexterity. As well as practising piano, one of his tasks was learning to work with clay, which instilled the spark of a love in him of working with tangible crafts. Waag’s Harry Reddick spoke to Nussbaumer, founder of glass atelier TiPii in Toulouse, about his love for crafts and the importance of passing on his knowledge and skills.

The magic of glass

After his fall from a horse, during the end of his schooling years, Nussbaumer’s class was taken to a one-week glass workshop at CIAV. This is where the spark for crafts blossomed into a more consuming passion. “We were playing little designers,” he tells. “We were making sketches, which the craftsmen realised. They were bringing our sketches to life. This was extremely exciting [to me] because I got bored with the theoretical stuff we were doing before that point. I was missing something real. And glassblowing was pretty real.”

Having reached a crossroads upon finishing his secondary education, Thibaut pursued that creation of something real in glassblowing. He signed up at CERFAV, in Vannes-le-Châtel; one of the three glassblowing educational institutions that exist in France. His four-year learning there was buttressed with a practical and theoretical internship at the Baccarat crystal factory near Nancy.

In these educational vocations, he managed to tap into a rich vein of knowledge and tradition of glass-blowing in France, which in itself is a singular strand of a much more ancient and globally-utilised craft, with evidence abounding of decorative glass from millennia past. For Thibaut, the way that this tradition has evolved and adapted to different historical and locational contexts is part of its magic.

“There are a few different aesthetic ways to work with glass. There is a Scandinavian wave, a Venetian style, and different aesthetic in the Czech Republic too. I travelled and grabbed a lot of details of how they are working, how they are using tools and how they are creating and working with their inspirations. Glassblowing is extremely playful and really sensual, with soft curves… it’s really subtle and soft.”

Learning curve

Glassblowing itself requires a furnace in order to melt glass, with which the glassblower uses a blowpipe to shape the molten glass. Thibaut spoke of some of the perceived barriers to entry into the field of glassblowing being the cost, including the cost of the furnace and the natural gas to continually heat it. However, the craft in itself can be enjoyed by people completely new to it, in much the same way as Thibaut first experienced in his youth, provided there is an expert and the materials to facilitate the process.

Past this initial entry point however, the craft requires a much more sustained and detailed approach to both learning technique and practising that dexterity. Thibaut said he wasn’t happy with what he’d made for his first five years of learning. Having put in the years working on his technical prowess, Thibaut is now able to spend more time on the ‘poetry and the soul’ inherent in the pieces rendered from the glassblowing process.

Blow It Yourself

In an attempt to bring both the romantic inspiration of glass and its technical tradition to a wider audience beyond the niche of the academic, Thibaut has founded TiPii Atelier, a glass workshop in Toulouse, together with Patricia Motte, a friend from CERFAV. One of the unusual features of the TiPii Atelier is this focus on making the craft more accessible. He even runs BIY (Blow It Yourself) sessions offering basic glassblowing lessons where their expertise helps the attendees (both children and adults) create simple blown glass items. In this way, Thibaut hopes to address the lack of knowledge about glassblowing in France, both in terms of the required resources and the methodology underpinning it, with the latter being something that teaching allowed him to personally understand on a ‘deeper level’.

“Glassblowing is extremely rare, and I felt I had to save and pass on this precious knowledge,” Thibaut explains. “This workshop at TiPii is the only one in 100 kilometers around, so my idea was to bring glasswork into an urban frame. That’s something that is really new, as small workshops involve people and help show people how it’s made. Quite a lot of people were searching to find out how to get involved in glasswork, and this is something we can now show them how to do together. There is a soul in such things, and everybody can feel it, you just have to offer them the opportunity to understand it and to see it. This is my job, to share it with as many people as I can.”

Many of the children who came along to these workshops ended up returning on a monthly basis, and have since become familiar with the names of the tools and techniques, and have ended up passing on word of their experience to other children in school or in their social life. In such a way, the same spark that encouraged Thibaut to return to the life of craft as a youth is being spread to a new generation, simultaneously returning the craft of glassblowing to the wider community.

Thibaut found that he took the art of working glass into his identity. “It is part of me, glass belongs to my life now.” Perhaps some of these children who were given their first taste of the beauty and the intricacies of glassblowing will take it with them into their life, becoming part of the world of heritage that glass represents.

Written by Harry Reddick (Waag)