Kiikan Kutomo - the weaving works at Kiikka, in south-west Finland - produced flatwoven rugs to designs by named Finnish textile artists, among them Laila Karttunen and Greta Skogster-Lehtinen, who is also represented in this collection. Pieces are generally dated to the 1920s and 1930s.
Swedish Inspired
Kristianstads Läns Hemslöjd was the handicraft society of Kristianstad county in eastern Skåne, one of the regional associations that grew up around the Swedish hemslöjd movement, and it ran an active weaving programme of its own. Designers who worked for it include Ingrid Dessau, who was a freelance designer to the society, and Kerstin Mauritzon, who worked there in the years before 1953.
Märta Måås-Fjetterström (1873-1941)
Carpets have been woven at Wilton in Wiltshire since the seventeenth century, and the first carpet-weaving factory in England was built there in 1655. The industry proper dates from 1741, when Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, brought in two French weavers to teach the trade locally and the first Wilton loom was patented; the town gave its name to the Wilton carpet, a cut-pile carpet woven on the wire principle.
Woodward & Lothrop was Washington's first department store, and for most of a century its largest. Samuel Walter Woodward and Alvin Mason Lothrop opened a dry-goods business at Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1873 and moved it to Washington in 1880; the store that grew from it anchored the city's downtown shopping district, absorbed the Palais Royal, and was known to everyone as Woodies. It filed for bankruptcy in 1994 and was wound up the following year.
The prestigious French design firm “Décoration Intérieure Moderne (DIM)” was founded just after World War I by Joubert and Mouveau with the objective of designing and manufacturing furniture and decorations. Individually or together, René Joubert, both an architect and a cabinetmaker, Georges Mouveau, a stage designer, and, starting in 1924, Philippe Petit produced standard “DIM” furniture. The pieces, in oak or walnut, are noted for their clean lines, plain style and sturdy look.
Barbro Sprinchorn (1929-1973) was a Swedish textile artist who worked in flatweave, embroidery and appliqué. Born in Sundsvall, she moved to Stockholm and trained at Konstfackskolan between 1948 and 1955, first as a drawing instructor and then through the school's advanced textile course.