Chapter 77: The designer as 'author’

Rose petals let us scatter
And fill the cup with red wine
The firmaments let us shatter
And come with a new design

Hafez of Shiraz (1326–1390)

But now that the Socratic culture can only hold the scepter of its infallibility with trembling hands; now that it has been shaken from two directions—once by the fear of its own consequences which it at length begins to surmise, and again because it no longer has its former naïve confidence in the eternal validity of its foundation—it is a sad spectacle to see how the dance of its thought rushes longingly toward ever-new forms, to embrace them, and then, shuddering, lets them go suddenly as Mephistopheles does the seductive Lamiae.

It is certainly the sign of the “breach” of which everyone speaks as the fundamental malady of modern culture, that the theoretical man, alarmed and dissatisfied at his own consequences, no longer dares entrust himself to the terrible icy current of existence: he runs timidly up and down the bank. So thoroughly has he been pampered by his optimistic views that he no longer wants to have anything whole, with all of nature’s cruelty attaching to it. Besides, he feels that a culture based on the principles of science must be destroyed when it begins to grow illogical, that is, to retreat before its own consequences.

Our art reveals this universal distress: in vain does one depend imitatively on all the great productive periods and natures; in vain does one accumulate the entire “world-literature” around modern man for his comfort; in vain does one place oneself in the midst of the art styles and artists of all ages, so that one may give names to them as Adam did to the beasts: one still remains eternally hungry, the “critic” without joy and energy, the Alexandrian man, who is at bottom a librarian and corrector of proofs, and wretchedly goes blind from the dust of books and from printers’ errors."

–Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872) 

In 1872 Friedrich Nietzsche, in his brilliant criticism of Euripides, The Birth of Tragedy advanced his thesis that the plays of Euripides represented the decline of tragedy, which saw its zenith in early to mid fifth century with Aeschylus and Sophocles. He maintained that the age of Aeschylus and Sophocles, was a logical development from Greek traditions of music, song and dance, which could be divided into two tendencies, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo, the god of light, dream and prophecy, personified the gentle reign of reason and intellect, pushing life to a somewhat unnatural ordering. Dionysus, the god of intoxication, personified emotions and particularly passions, sometimes whipped to a self-destructive frenzy of excess. The Dionysian suppresses his intellect to live as one with nature, and wine plays an essential role in his cult.

Nietzsche argued that the early fifth century tragedians, Aeschylus and Sophocles, were able to reconcile the two antithetical tendencies of the Apollonian and Dionysian moods within their plays. In the tragedies of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, and of Shakespeare as well as in the music-drama of Wagner Nietzsche was convinced that 'Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo, and Apollo, finally, the language of Dionysus, whereby the highest goal of tragedy and all art is achieved' This duality represented the fusion of the two major currents in Greek poetry: the Apollonian element of Greek tragedy was responsible for advancing serenity and rational imagery, as reflected in the epics of Homer, while the Dionysian element of Greek tragedy offered a darker insight into the irrational and unpredictable nature of human kind, as reflected in the poems by Archilochus and Pindar.

However, according to Nietzsche Euripides failed to balance the Apollonian and Dionysian psyche within his plays: “To excise that original and all powerful Dionysian element from tragedy and to rebuild tragedy purely on the basis of an un-Dionysian [Apollonian] art, morality, and world-view – that is the Euripidean tendency.” By disregarding the dark and irrational nature of the Greek psyche, and focusing almost exclusively on the rational and the visible , Euripides had, in Nietzsche's view, occasioned the decline of Greek tragedy.

Had Nietzsche were alive and observed the sorry state of the conceptual art in the 20th century he would have assured us that by focusing almost exclusively on the dialectics of aesthetic discourse and on the process and systems analysis the post-modern conceptual art, with its complete reliance on artists' self-analytic conceptual statements exposing the internal logic of their work, has contaminated the essence of art. He would have been disgusted reading the account given by R. Cronk in his 1996 essay, The Rise and Fall of (Post-)Modern:

The new aesthetic made the assumption that beneath art lay an internal logic that could be understood through language theory. These artists were concerned with producing art that established its own context within the dialectics of aesthetic discourse. The intent was to provoke aesthetic sensibilities into the realization of art as a semiotic device.
(...)  The artist abandoned the search for iconic form in favor of an aesthetic based on propositional logic. He turned from the considerations of formal perception to approach art in self-analytic conceptual terms.
Structuralism and the aesthetic theories that followed entrenched themselves behind a reductive hypothesis that denied the relevance of the numinous art experience. The symbolic and the spiritual were out. They were no longer interested in presence or significant form. Art establishment aestheticians abandoned transcendent aesthetics for a system of value based on man's greatest attribute -- the contemplative intellect.
(...)
 For the Structuralist, the idea and its context became the subject. There were no restrictions on the medium. The artist could mix media and include theory and environment as elements of the work. The artist could put mirrors in the landscape and call it sculpture because the idea was the art, not the object. By contrast, the Formalists had contemplated attributes inherent to the object without regard to surrounding spaces. Minimal artists rejected the Formalists' concern for internal relationships. The Minimal shape, like the blank canvas, stood for itself. There was no attempt at illusion. It presented no further signification.

When a culture believes the illusion that anything may be understood and reformed in theory, then philosophical or scientific theory will eclipse its world, resulting in the domination of theoretical man, and the demise of art. However,the illusion of understanding, being an illusion, eventually runs up against its own limits, for the unintelligible is the case. In Nietzsche's view, as Euripides confronts and challenges the Dionysiac, for example when his Pentheus confronts and challenges the character Dionysus in the Bacchae, or the post-modern art challenges the nature of aesthetics, they seek to eliminate the Dionysiac basis of tragic drama and art altogether, in favour of a new, experimental, audaciously rational drama, and conceptual art based on the Apolline without the Dionysiac - which is, however, an impossible goal because, it turns out, the Dionysiac is the precondition of the Apolline, and without it, the Apolline atrophies and withers.

Nietzsche praised the great achievement of Kant, and of Schopenhauer, in clarifying the limitation of knowledge. From the perspective of theoretical reasoning itself, Kant showed that our legitimate knowledge is based on categories, but the categories are not applicable to things in themselves.Thus there are limits to knowledge. Science is fundamentally limited by what it cannot grasp, and it cannot grasp the very ground of a thing's existence in the thing in itself. In contrast, the Dionysiac art creates the "thing-in-itself". However, the true art is exclusive as Nietzsche explains :

Accordingly, we must learn to identify as a cruel-sounding truth the fact that slavery belongs to the essence of a culture: a truth, though, which leaves open no doubt about the absolute value of existence. This truth is the vulture which gnaws at the liver of the Promethean promoter of culture. The misery of men living a life of toil has to be increased to make the production of the world of art possible for a small number of Olympian men. Here we find the source of that hatred which has been nourished by the Communists and Socialists as well as their paler descendants, the white race of ‘Liberals’ of every age against the arts, but also against classical antiquity. If culture were really left to the discretion of a people, if inescapable powers, which are law and restraint to the individual, did not rule, then the glorification of spiritual poverty and the iconoclastic destruction of the claims of art would be more than the revolt of the oppressed masses against drone-like individuals: it would be the cry of pity tearing down the walls of culture; the urge for justice, for equal sharing of the pain, would swamp all other ideas.

Of course, here Nietzsche is not condoning the slavery, what he means is that the nature of economic organization concentrates the purchasing power in the hands of "a small number of Olympian men" who can afford the true art. The solution is not to kill the true art, since it's the only hope for the mankind's liberation. Killing of the true art is perpetuating the structural inequity and imbalances, with the miserable "men living a life of toil" feeling quite content with eating their hamburgers, drinking their cans of coke while watching their ball games.

In 1996, Michael Rock, asked: "What does it really mean to call for a graphic designer to be an author?". He wrote:

Authorship has become a popular term in graphic design circles, especially in those at the edges of the profession: the design academies and the murky territory between design and art. The word has an important ring to it, with seductive connotations of origination and agency. But the question of how designers become authors is a difficult one. and exactly who qualifies and what authored design might look like depends on how you define the term and determine admission into the pantheon.

Authorship may suggest new approaches to the issue of the design process in a profession traditionally associated more with the communication rather than the origination of messages. But theories of authorship also serve as legitimising strategies, and authorial aspirations may end up reinforcing certain conservative notions of design production and subjectivity - ideas that run counter to recent critical attempts to overthrow the perception of design as based on individual brilliance. The implications of such a re-definition deserve careful scrutiny. What does it really mean to call for a graphic designer to be an author?

see: The designer as author, Eye no. 20 vol. 5, 1996

Two years later, in 1998, Ellen Lupton wrote;

The slogan ‘designer as author’ has enlivened debates about the future of graphic design since the early 1990s. Behind this phrase is the will to help designers to initiate content, to work in an entrepreneurial way rather than simply reacting to problems and tasks placed before them by clients. The word author suggests agency, intention, and creation, as opposed to the more passive functions of consulting, styling, and formatting. Authorship is a provocative model for rethinking the role of the graphic designer at the start of the millennium; it hinges, however, on a nostalgic ideal of the writer or artist as a singular point of origin.(...)

As an alternative to ‘designer as author’, I propose ‘designer as producer’. Production is a concept embedded in the history of modernism. Avant-garde artists and designers treated the techniques of manufacture not as neutral, transparent means to an end but as devices equipped with cultural meaning and aesthetic character. In 1934, the German critic Walter Benjamin wrote ‘The Author as Producer’, a text that attacked the conventional view of authorship as a purely literary enterprise. He exclaimed that new forms of communication – film, radio, advertising, newspapers, the illustrated press – were melting down traditional artistic genres and corroding the borders between writing and reading, authoring and editing.

See:The Designer as Producer in The Education of a Graphic Designer,ed. Steven Heller (New York: Allworth Press, 1998), 159-62.

Perhaps the whole discourse of 'the designer as author’ has started with Roland Barthes' argument in "The Death of the Author" (1968) that can be reinterpreted in the context of design as:

"[A] text is made up of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author"

Barthes' starting-point is a sentence lifted from Sarrasine (1830), a little-known Balzac novella about an artist who falls in love with a young castrato he believes to be a woman. He became fascinated  with this ambiguous tale of mistaken identity in  his S/Z (1970). For him the ambiguity of Sarrasine's feelings is reflected in the mysterious identity of the personality who, paradoxically, describes the castrato as the essence of womanhood. Who is this personage? Is he the duped, fallen in love artist? The narrator? Balzac the writer? Balzac the man?... Having explored all possibilities, Barthes  concludes that it is impossible to determine who has uttered the sentiment. In a design context, we may reformulate  Barthes'  conclusion  to describe design as a space "where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that designs".

According to Barthes framework, then, it is the observer--not the designer-- who is able to play the role of the proper witness for the "plural of the design" and provide it with unity, a unity which is not appropriative or limiting or owned because the observer remains anonymous, unlike the designer. The designer has thus become nothing more than "the instance designing". Thus, we can proclaim like Barthes that:

"the birth of the observer,  must be at the cost of the death of the Designer."

Michel Foucault, in "What is an Author" (1969) reexamines the role of the author, by searching in the void created by his death. We can also reformulate Foucault's statement in the context of "What is a Designer?" and like him  we can argue that:   

"…[W]e should reexamine the empty space left by the designer's disappearance; we should attentively observe, along its gaps and fault lines, its new demarcations, and the reapportionment of this void; we should await the fluid functions released by this disappearance"

In the gap that has emerged we like Foucault can  find  the "designer-function" that now has assumed the role of the designer, and suggest that a  designer should be understood as a function of design's discourse, rather than as an entity unto itself:

"[T]he function of a  designer is to characterize the existence, circulation, and operation of certain discourses of design within a society"

Looking from this perspective we like  Foucault can ask, ‘What difference does it make who is designing?'

"It would be as false to seek the designer-as-author in relation to the actual designer as to the fictional illustrator; the " designer-as-author -function" arises out of their scission--in the division and distance of the two"

In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche suggests an artist’s ambition

“demands above all that their work should preserve the highest excellence in their own eyes, as they understand excellence.”

In this Nietzscheian framework , one can maintain that as a designer becomes more and more extolled, he begins to detach himself from himself and obtain an additional identity, a persona, as ‘the  designer-as-author’ for the public, not as an individual. He takes on the role of ‘master’ through his masterpieces, resulting in the cessation of being “serious with regard to himself.”

Perhaps this is partly because acclaimed designs outlive their designers. In fact, not only are the masterpieces the posthumous representation of the ‘life’ of those artists, but in the end the masterpieces simultaneously take on a life of their own. One’s masterpieces acquire separate identities which only kill the  designer-as-author even more. For instance, after "The Bridge on the River Kwai" in 1957, David Lean's first great success, which won seven Academy Awards, including best director and "Lawrence of Arabia," that won seven Oscars, including one for Lean as director, and "Doctor Zhivago," in 1965 that won three Oscars and a best-director nomination for him, I remember an interview with Lean in which he confessed that the harsh treatment of "Ryan's Daughter" in 1970 by critics made him so depressed that he did not make another film for 14 years -- as an artist he was dead in all those years -- had those masterpieces  not existed, perhaps "Ryan's Daughter" would have been treated differently.

Employing Wayne Booth's concept of "implied author," in the context of design in the form of "implied designer-as-author"  defined as "the product of the design and the creature of the designer, in the sense Alexander Nehamas has employed, in his "Writer, Text, Work, Author" we can also argue that "implied designer-as-author," is contingent upon the design itself, since "even if several designs have been composed by a single designer, their implied designer-as-authors are held to be distinct"

"Designers (but not, as we shall see, designer-as-authors) exist outside their designs and precede them in truth, not in appearance only. And precisely for this reason, designers are not in a position of interpretative authority over their designs, even if these are, by law, their property"

Nehamas' notions of author and text are the closest to my concepts of  the " designer-as-author" and "design" in graphic design, to the extent that we can appropriate Nehamas' framework we do, in order to argue that:

The relation between  designer-as-author and design can be called "transcendental." Unlike abstract symbols,  designer-as-authors are not simply parts of design; unlike actual designers, they are not straightforwardly outside them. The  designer-as-author now emerges as the agent postulated in order to account for construing the design as the product of an action. Designs, then, are works if they generate an author; the designer-as-author is therefore the product of interpretation, not an object that exists independently in the world.

The figure of the  designer-as-author, in contrast to that of the designer, allows us, however, to avoid the view that to understand a design is to re-create or replicate a state of mind which someone else has already undergone. Designers own their designs as one owns one's property. Though legally their own (eigen), designs can be taken away from their designers and still leave them who they are.  Designer-as-authors, by contrast, own their works as one owns one's actions. Their works are authentically their own (eigentlich). They cannot be taken away (that is, reinterpreted) without changing their  designer-as-authors, without making the characters manifested in them different or even unrecognizable.Designer-as-authors cannot be taken apart from their works.

In this Nehamasian world interpretation need not directly relate to a desgn's deeper meaning, but rather interpretation "is the activity by means of which we try to construe movements and objects in the world around us as actions and their products". To understand interpretation as an activity or an action thus allows one to place a design within a "perpetually broadening" context. Using Proust's Remembrance of Things Past as Nehamas does, and applying it in the context of design:

Only when the designer succeeds in designing the flower's very silence and in seeing his experience of that silence as part of the process that finally enables him to become a  designer-as-author, that is, only when he takes this experience of "incomplete" understanding itself and gives it a place with the complete account of his life and his effort to become able to design, does his designing begin.

As Nehamas believes the significance of objects does not lie in their hidden symbolic signification, but rather in their interrelation: "[T]heir significance is their very ability to become part of this design, their susceptibility to description, even if this description is exhausted by their surface. For the design is nothing over and above the juxtaposition of many such surfaces, the meaning of which is to be found in their interrelations" . As a result, "the designer-author now emerges as the agent postulated in order to account for construing a design as the product of an action".

Perhaps it is in this vein that Peter Shillingsburg in Scholarly Editing in the Computer Age: Theory and Practice states:

"The author as initiator of discourse is showing new life, and renewed interest in social institutions has given the author further life as a member of a community producing works of art as social phenomena.

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Chapter 76; Graphic Design for Textile

"In his Natural History, Pliny states that printing on textiles  was particularly utilized in Egypt. Printed material is only represented by fabrics of the fourth century at the earliest and continues until the Arab period. In those days, there were great textile centers such as Alexandria  Panopolis, Oxyrhynchus, Tinnis and Damietta, but regrettably we know this only from texts, because any trace of weaving shops and their fragile wooden looms has vanished. However, by studying the fabrics themselves, scholars are often able to derive their origins.


As Patrick Hunt has argued the Sassanian Empire (224-651 AD) of Iran's

monopoly on silk mobility to the West stymied Byzantine efforts to acquire silk at reasonable costs and it wasn’t until near the end of the Sassanian Empire, around 563 AD, that Justinian in Constantinople was able to surreptitiously begin a Byzantine silk industry. The Sassanian empire ended with the Arab invasions in the middle 7th century that brought Islam to the region ending Persian rule. Famous for their textiles and especially their silk designs, which were distinct even while incorporating Sogdian and Bactrian patterns.

(...) Medieval silk vestments and even shrouds often displayed Sassanid motifs even when loomed and embroidered long after the Sassanid Empire. For example, the silk shroud of St. Sernin of Toulouse, 12th century from Al Andaluz (Moorish Spain), and now in the Cluny Museum in Paris, represents two Sassanian peacocks facing each other across a Tree of Life. Other examples include the Reliquary of St. Len at the Victorian Albert in London as well as other silk and textile fragments whose motif and style were borrowed from Sassanian art long after its own floruit was forgotten or possibly never really kown in the West.

Sassanian Textile from 6-8th c. CE

Although a fairly unknown dynasty, the Sasanian dynasty of Iran established itself as a period for creativity and high-art. A contemporary to Christian Rome and the Byzantine Empire, Sasanian Iran managed to influence much in science and art. Of interest is their trade in textile, of which examples are practically non-existent due to unfavorable environment and rapid decay.

For most of the four hundred years of Sasanian rule, the Persians were the dominant culture of the Silk Road. Their style, expressed through key trade items and diplomatic gifts, especially the silks and metalwares produced in the imperial workshops, became a visual lingua franca, found dispersed from Japan to Europe. The lion, symbol of kingship, power, prestige, and protection of sacred spaces, was a dominant motif on both silverware and silks, either as the dying lion which confers status on its royal hunter  or as the guardian lion of the empire. 

Of the two forms of production, silk was probably the more influential. Initially raw silk was imported along the Silk Road from China to the near East, mainly to Persia and Byzantine Syria, where it was then dyed and woven into twills and brocades. The value-added textiles were then re-exported back along the trade routes to China and beyond to Japan or shipped westward to Byzantium and the emerging kingdoms of Europe. As more and more Central Asian and Western cultures acquired knowledge of sericulture, the designs were widely copied, often using the draw loom developed in Persia. By the eighth century, Sasanian motifs are found as both imported goods and locally produced copies from sources as dispersed as Spain, Byzantium, Japan, Sogdiana, and China [Heleanor B. Feltham, “Lions, Silks and Silver: The Influence of Sasanian Persia” Sino-Platonic Papers, 206 (August 2010)]

Textile of Sasanian Persian or Sogdian origin combining hunt and animal combat motifs,

Iranian silk fragment with winged lions to each side of a ‘tree of life’, C8th. Note the particularly elaborate roundel surrounding the central motif

Square banner panel made of plain woven silk, clamp-resist dyed in red and blue with part of a large pearl roundel enclosing four pairs of confronted geese arranged around a central floral medallion.

Add captionFragment of Chinese silk found in an ice tomb at Pazyryk in the Altai. Warring

Sericulture originated in China, and rapidly became important as the defining female contribution to the family economy, practiced by all classes from the empress to the peasant. According to legend, around 2700 BC Leizu, wife of the mythical and creative Yellow Emperor Huangdi, sat beneath a mulberry tree sipping her tea, when a fat, white cocoon fell into her cup. As she fished it out she found a loose thread, which she unwound and unwound, until her lap was full of a long, fine, shining heap of unspun silk. Inspired by the beauty of the thread, she gathered cocoons until she had sufficient thread to weave a sumptuous robe for her husband. Over time she learned how to select the finest cocoons, allow their moths to emerge and mate, keep the eggs at an even temperature until they hatched, and care for the worms as they gorged themselves on the leaves of the white mulberry, and how to unwind and reel and spin and dye the glistening threads. And so the art of sericulture was born, and Leizu became a goddess.

 In reality sericulture developed in China possibly as early as 7000 years ago, as evidenced by fabric fragments and spinning tools from sites along the lower Yangzi River. By the Han dynasty (202 BC–221 AD), reeling and spinning silk were considered household duties for women, and in every silk-producing district a large part of each day was devoted to the feeding and care of silkworms and the unravelling, spinning, weaving, dying, and embroidering of silk.

States period 475–221 BC.

6th–7thAD Silk twill textile, woven in Japan, imitating a Sasanian Persian original, from the Shoso-in Depository in Nara (established 754 AD).

Byzantine silk textile with Sasanian-style senmurvs. Musée Royaux d'Art et d'Histoir, Bruxelles

The Shroud of Saint Columba, St. Sens Cathedral, France. C8th silk textile from Zandan near Bukhara.

Silk Shroud fragment of St. Sernin of Toulouse, 12th c. from Andaluz (Moorish Spain), Cluny Museum, Paris (photo in public domain)

Spain El Andaluz 11th century silk, influenced by Sasanian senmurv.

Textile fragment, late 10th century; cAbbasid Probably Iraq Cotton, plain weave with painted inscription;

Cotton textiles from the eastern Islamic world were often inexpensively decorated with simple painted brushstrokes. The painted surface decoration of these textiles imitates the more luxurious type with embroidered silk inscriptions and also employs the same cAbbasid epigraphic style. The inscription on this fragment is legible. "Perfect blessing" is the basic unit which is embellished with superfluous undersweeps that echo the naturally curved script as it is repeated. The final letter of the word "blessing" (baraka) is extended to punctuate another series of repetitions created in the zone above the main inscription. It is possible that this visually pleasing pattern filled the length of the textile.

Piece of the so called “Marwan Silk” from the collection of Charles Robinson and now in the Whitworth Art Gallery. From the design it appears that it originated in Central Asia. It is associated with an inscription that identifies it with Marwan II, the last Caliph of the Ummayyad dynasty who fled from Syria to Egypt in AD 750 (The Whitworth Art Gallery,

Textile Fragment with Figural and Floral Motifs and Inscriptions, 7th-8th century. Wool, linen, Umayyad period, 7th-8th century

Coptic and Arabic influences meld in this early Islamic textile fragment to create a fascinating hybrid of Coptic-style human and animal figures in the main band of decoration, and a curious Arabic Kufic inscription that has been transformed into an illegible series of decorative geometric motifs along the upper register. Early Egyptian Islamic textiles such as this one were probably still woven by Coptic weavers, as suggested by the coarse, dark wool foundation and by the way the tapestry-woven Coptic-style decoration in wool and linen is paired with an illegible Kufic script band.

India in particular was known for the quality of its textiles, and for centuries was involved in a brisk trade with Far and Southeast Asia. European companies worked their way into this commercial nexus in the early sixteenth century. The Portuguese were the first to arrive, having discovered a sea route from Europe to the East that allowed them to avoid the heavy taxes on goods sent overland through the Middle East. The British East India Company received its charter in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company was founded two years later. These agencies bought textiles in India for silver and gold, exchanged them for spices grown in the Malay Islands, and sold the spices in Europe and Asia. Soon Indian textiles were exported directly to Europe, where they became highly fashionable. The popularity of Indian textiles is evidenced in the number of words that have made their way into English: calico, pajama, gingham, dungaree, chintz, and khaki. The luxury textiles coveted for centuries are now collected in museums, where they are often grouped and studied on the basis of their patterns of production.

Kalamkari hanging with figures in an architectural setting, Qutb Shahi period (1496–1687), ca. 1640–50 India, Deccan Cotton; plain weave, mordant painted and dyed, resist dyed;

Cover for a ceremonial gift (rumal), ca. 1640–50 India, Deccan, Golconda Cotton, stenciled, painted, and dyed.

Safavid textiles are praised as the pinnacle of Iranian loom weaving. When the Safavids came to power at the turn of the sixteenth century, the Iranian textile industry was already well developed in the production and sale of woven silk textiles and rugs as well as raw silk for export. The textile industry consisted of urban workshops producing textiles independently, provincial centers focusing on rug weaving, and small farms cultivating silk in the Caspian region. As the Safavids set up their capital cities of Tabriz, Qazvin, and finally Isfahan, the textile industry became centralized and was swiftly incorporated into the national economy, creating an expansive revenue stream.


Under the reign of Shah Tahmasp (1524–76), royal workshops were established primarily to service the court, while raw silk continued to be produced and sold to the state by independent producers from northern provinces such as Gilan. In the seventeenth century, Shah cAbbas I (r. 1587–1629) centralized the Iranian economy by developing a state monopoly over the silk trade, controlling production in the Caspian provinces, where the bulk of the raw material was produced. In addition, the state regained control of ports in the Persian Gulf from Portuguese occupation, facilitating maritime trade and rerouting silk trade away from areas under Ottoman jurisdiction. When the Safavid capital was established in Isfahan in 1598, Armenian textile workers were relocated to the neighborhood of New Julfa, in close proximity to Shah cAbbas' palatial complex. This local textile industry included dyers, weavers, and embroiderers producing luxury textiles mainly for export under the supervision of the state. Private workshops in urban centers such as Yazd and Kashan continued to produce textiles for sale within and beyond Iranian borders, and are especially known for velvet and lampas-woven luxury silks.

Textile depicting a courtier in a landscape, 16th century; Safavid Iran,

Figural designs relied heavily on manuscript illustration for composition and subject matter. Popular scenes feature idealized pastimes such as hunting, falconry, or poetry reading in garden settings, a trend that mirrors contemporary paintings. Some of the finest examples of figural silks produced during the reign of Shah Abbas feature characters from popular literature such as the lovers Khusrau and Shirin and Layla and Majnun from Nizami's Khamsa, or battle scenes referencing the herculean Rustam in Firdausi's Shahnama.

Silk panel of Safavid courtiers leading Georgian captives, mid–16th century; Safavid Iran

This textile, nearly full width, depicts a Safavid prince on horseback and a child riding pillion; behind them, an adult male captive is led by a chain. It is one of only thirteen extant silks, probably fashioned as garments, that depict some variation on this theme using similar techniques and enhanced by metal threads. These compositions do not appear in contemporary manuscript painting, but correlate with Shah Tahmasp’s military campaigns between 1540 and 1553; they may have been produced as part of a propaganda campaign to encourage confidence in Safavid military might. The captives are identified as Georgian men, women, and children. The mythical simurgh bird watches the scene from a nearby tree, above the prisoner’s head.

Velvet panel with flowering plants, first half of 17th century; Safavid, Iran, Silk, cotton, flat metal thread; cut and voided velvet, brocaded;

This type of large-scale floral velvet was most likely intended for use as household furnishing. The individual motifs feature stylized flora framed by foliage, emulating the saz leaf style made popular by black pen illustrations. The repeat is artfully arranged within rows of fantastic flowering plants to create the effect of a seamless pattern. Safavid velvets were among the most expensive fabrics sold on the international market during the seventeenth century and exemplify a preference for luxury and opulence.

During the Renaissance, luxurious fabrics made of silk and precious metal threads counted among the most valuable items owned by both individuals and the Church. As an expression of power, wealth, and taste, specially woven fabrics incorporating a family coat-of-arms or other motifs associated with the family’s reputation were particularly valuable. Such fabrics were used in secular dress, religious vestments, and interior furnishings. The precise meaning of some of the motifs that held special significance during the Renaissance has been lost over time. But the fact remains that these luxurious textiles were the most highly valued products of the talented silk weavers of the Italian peninsula, and were exported all over Europe, as well as to the Ottoman empire. The consumption of the most expensive fabric was confined to the upper classes who could afford them, but the production and marketing of the fabrics involved many more people at almost all levels of society. The period from about 1400 to 1600 was one in which the weavers of the Italian peninsula, as well as Spain, excelled at producing spectacular patterned velvet textil.


The Industrial Revolution played a major role in transforming the production and consumption of textiles in nineteenth-century Europe. The importance of the textile industries to the development of the factory system cannot be overestimated. Many of the major inventions of this period applied directly or indirectly to the textile industries, from the spinning jenny (invented by James Hargreaves in 1764), which automated the preparation of weft threads for the loom, to the steam engine (perfected by James Watt in 1775), which was applied to the power loom. The end result was that both plain and patterned textiles could be produced more quickly and cheaply, making mass-produced fabrics for dress and furnishings available to a large portion of society. While consumers benefited from a greater variety of goods at lower costs, textile workers often suffered as the factories replaced many skilled weavers with unskilled workers at lower wages. France continued to be the leading source for luxury dress and furnishing silks during the nineteenth century, as it had been throughout the eighteenth century, while England's technical prowess enabled the country to excel at mass production for the middle-market consumer.

Competition between French and English textile manufacturers and designers was fueled by the international exhibitions. France responded to the success of the London's Great Exhibition of 1851 by organizing its own in 1855. It remained the leader in costume and interior fashions, while the English sought to capture a larger share of the luxury goods market. French textile designers were traditionally better trained and earned more money than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe; French studios existed which specialized in designs for export. The Victoria and Albert Museum was founded in 1852 as a repository for art objects intended to serve as inspiration to the design community in addition to serving the public at large. Three French museums, the Musée Historique des Tissus in Lyon, Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and Musée de l'Impression sur Étoffes in Mulhouse (in the cotton-printing center of Alsace) were all founded between 1856 and 1863 with goals similar to those of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Silk cut pile-on-pile velvet, used by Venetian senators. Venice, first half of the sixteenth century. Musée Historique des Tissus, Lyon.

Pile-on-pile velvet Italy, Venice, late 16th or early 17th century European Textiles in the Keir Collection 400BC to 1800AD, Monique King and Donald King, Faber and Faber, London, 1990

Altar Frontal (detail), showing violet velvet with flowers in gold. 16th century, Venice. Collection Cini, Venice.

Altar Frontal (portion), showing large floral motifs and pomegranates. Early 16th century, Florence. Museo Civico, Spoleto.

Green Velvet (portion), showing pattern of interlaced chestnut branches on ivory silk ground enriched with silver thread. Early 16th century, Florence. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

Silk Ciselé velvet Genoa, second half of the sixteenth century Musée Historique des Tissus, Lyon.

Cope (detail) showing pattern in gold and pink on grass-green ground. 16th century, Tuscany Collection Cini, Venice.

Cut and Uncut Velvet Cope, with changeable reflections of red, violet, and green. 16th century, Venice. Church of the Frari, Venice

Damask (portion), brocaded with colored silks in a pattern of parrots and bunches of flowers in vases and crowns. 16th century. Museo della Cattedrale, Sam Gimignano.

Silk cut voided velvet with brocading and bouclé wefts in gold and silver ("riccio sopra riccio" velvet). Florence, second quarter of the sixteenth century. Museo Civico di Torino, Turin.

Ciselé velvet. Italy, possibly Florence, second half 16th or early 17th century. Acquired in Italy.

Polychrome Velvet (portion), on green satin ground 16th century, Venice Museé des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

Cut and Uncut Brown Velvet, on yellow ground (portion), showing pattern of small floral motifs arrayed in parallel lines. 16th century, Genoa Museo del Castello Sforzesco, Milan

Velvet fragments with Medici arms, 1440–1500 Florence or Venice, Silk, metal thread;

Textile with Medici emblems, late 15th–early 16th century Italian (probably Florence) Silk satin foundation weave with metal–wrapped thread loops

Velvet fragment with Sempervivum tectorum motif, late 15th–early 16th century Italian (Milan) Silk velvet brocaded with metal–wrapped thread

"Allegorical Figures," ca. 1893 Designed by Léon–Victor Solon (French, 1872–1957); Manufacturer: Thomas Wardle & Co. English Printed silk.

This piece represents the only known textile design by Léon-Victor Solon (1872–1957). Like his father, Marc-Louis-Emanuel Solon (1835–1913), he worked primarily as a ceramic artist for the English firm of Minton, and was well known for his successful interpretation of Art Nouveau–style floral and figural compositions on ceramic tiles and decorative vases. In addition to being printed on silk, the design was also printed on cotton velveteen, which was a common furnishing textile of the period.

Indienne, Musée de l'impression sur étoffes de Mulhouse

Indienne is the name given in France to a painted or printed fabric made ​​in Europe between the seventeenth and nineteenth century. These fabrics are so named because they were originally imported from  India. These painted fabrics , Indian or Persian , were known as madras , beijing, gougourans , damask or cirsacs . The edict of 26 October 1686 prohibited the entry into France of cotton fabrics , as well as their manufacturing. It aimed to protect the silk weavers , wool , flax and hemp . Many Huguenots traders and artisans , persecuted for their Protestant religion in the early 1680s , went into exile in Switzerland. In 1580 , first Indiennes, imported by Armenians, appeared in an inventory list in Marseille. In 1669, Colbert created the free port of Marseille , where Armenians settled at his request, to teach Marseillais to paint cottons and supplies. Thereafter, Marseillais began to produce  these fabrics themselves, which then took the name Indienne of Marseille. The French factories grew in Nantes , Mulhouse, Jouy -en- Josas , Rouen, Bolbec and Alsace and in mainly Protestant Switzerland -- Geneva and Neuchâtel.

Paul Poiret (French, 1879-1944) | Antelopes, c. 1930 | Cotton, plain weave; block printed

18th Century French Silk Brocade

Patterned silk velvet was the most expensive and prestigious of all woven textiles, but other patterned silks, such as damasks and brocades, were costly as well. The city-states of the Italian peninsula produced the majority of European luxury silks during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and continued to dominate the production of luxury textiles well into the seventeenth century. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Venice and Florence were renowned for their sumptuous Renaissance velvets incorporating gold and silver threads with large floral patterns after the pomegranate motif. During the seventeenth century, Genoa began producing polychrome floral velvets with large-scale patterns primarily intended for wall covering and furniture. This so-called Genoa or jardinière velvet (38.182.2) remained the preferred choice for formal interiors through the eighteenth century, even as fashions in dress began to call for lighter fabrics.

A sizeable silk-weaving industry existed in France from the fifteenth century, centered in the city of Tours. Tours had the advantage of being close to Paris and the primary French consumers of luxury textiles: the court and nobility. Under King Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), the superintendent of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683) launched an ambitious scheme to organize and promote the textile industries in France, both at home and abroad. Lyon, which had previously been an important trade center for merchants importing Italian textiles, emerged as the center of the reorganized industry, and subsequently overtook Tours as the largest French producer of luxurious silk textiles.

Silk weaving in Lyon was supported by other subsidiary crafts such as spinning, dyeing, and the printing of special paper for textile design drawings, in addition to the presence of merchants who supplied materials and sold the finished products. It has been estimated that more than one-third of the population of Lyon, almost 15,000 workers, was involved in the silk industry either directly or indirectly by the late eighteenth century.

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 encouraged large numbers of Huguenot (French Protestant) artisans to relocate from France to England, the Netherlands, and Germany. The area of Spitalfields, east of London, was one of the main beneficiaries of this influx and subsequently became known for its fine dress silks. In the mid-eighteenth century, English silk designers distinguished their work from the prevailing French taste for generalized floral types (69.79.3) by producing spare floral patterns often based on actual botanical specimens or engravings (62.136.1). It is during the early eighteenth century that the identities of individual silk designers become known. One designer, an Englishwoman named Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690–1763) is notable for the fact that a large collection of her designs have survived, and silks woven to these designs have been identified

Design for a woven silk by Anna Maria Garthwaite, Spitalfields, 1730 - 1740. Victoria & Albert Mus eum

Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690- 1763) became one of the leading pattern drawers in the English silk industry despite the likelihood that she did not receive the formal technical training usually considered necessary to take up such a profession. She produced as many as 80 commissioned designs a year, such as this one, for master weavers and mercers. She lived and worked in Spitalfields, London from about 1730 until her death in 1763. Her interest in natural form--and her talent for depicting it--characterized her designs throughout her professional life.

Design for woven silk, by Anna Maria Garthwaite. London, England, early 18th century

Design, by William Kilburn. Irish artist 

William Kilburn(1745-1818), was an illustrator for William Curtis' Flora Londinensis, as well as a leading designer & printer of calico.Kilburn was the son of a Dublin architect. Because of his penchant for drawing & his delicate health, his parents apprenticed him to Jonathan Sisson, an Englishman, who had established a calico printing factory in the countryside at Leixlip. When his father died, Kilburn decided to visit London, where he obtained a ready sale for his designs amongst the calico printers. He also drew & engraved flowers from nature for the print shops. This led to his acquaintance with Mr. William Curtis, the botanist, who, deeming himself fortunate in meeting an artist of such uncommon talent, agreed with him to execute the plates for his great work, the Flora Londinensis. A few hundred originals of his water color designs, make up the Kilburn Album, housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Design, by William Kilburn

William Morris-1883-evenlode 2

William Morris (1834 - 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. He had trained as an architect and had early unfulfilled ambitions to be a painter. As a student at Oxford he met the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and through this friendship he came into contact with the Pre-Raphaelite painters, such as Rossetti, and others in their circle.

In 1859 Morris married Jane Burden, an unconventional beauty and a favourite model for the Pre-Raphaelites. He immediately commissioned his friend, the architect Philip Webb, to build them a new home. Morris and his wife moved into Red House in 1860 and spent the next two years furnishing and decorating the interior. Morris did much of the work himself, with help from his artist friends. Prompted by the success of their efforts, they decided to start their own company.  Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.  was a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production in the UK.

Millefleurs designed in 1912-1914 by William Morris, 1860-1932 for Morris & Co. This design was based on Flemish millefleurs tapestries.

John Henry Dearle. Daffodil wallpaper design, 1891.

Daffodil was a pattern that was both intended for printed textile and wallpaper. In some respects, it is perhaps slightly more formal than some of the typical examples produced by Morris himself. However, it does have flowing floral motifs and lines and is still within the English tradition of native flora and fauna that had been so much a part of Morris & Co from the very beginning of the company in the mid-nineteenth century.

Jacket, Kayan people, Indonesia, East Kalimantan, late 19th century. The Textile Museum

Mummy Mask, Ocucaje style, Peru, South Coast, Ica Valley, Ocucaje, 350-275 B.C The Textile Museum

Velvet cushion cover, Ottoman, Turkey, Istanbul, 17th century. The Textile Museum

Hanging, Peru, c. 1650-1700. The Textile Museum

John Henry Dearle, 1869-1932, Manufacturer and retailer: Morris & Co.,Designed c. 1880

Dearle began working as an assistant in Morris & Co.'s Oxford Street shop in 1878. His artistic talent was soon recognised and he was trained as a tapestry weaver by William Morris. By 1887 Dearle had produced his first tapestry design and by 1890 he had become the firm's chief designer, working on woven and printed textiles, carpets and embroideries as well as tapestries. After Morris's death he became Art Director. His son Duncan also worked for the firm and was a director until the time of its closure in 1940.

Lucienne Day (1917-2010), was the foremost British textile designer of her period,furnishing fabrics, of which the most famous was the Festival of Britain abstract pattern Calyx, hung in every "contemporary" living room in Britain. Lucienne drew on the English tradition of patterns based on plant forms that went back as far as Morris. She took motifs drawn from nature – flowers, grasses, shoots, the intricate patterns of the landscape – and transformed them into something absolutely new. Part of their success was the implied message of regrowth and optimism for a Britain only just recovering from war. She was also deeply influenced by European abstract painting. Her textiles speak the visual language of Kandinsky, Miró and Klee. It pleased her to think that people who could not afford to buy a painting for their living room could at least own a pair of abstract patterned curtains. Many of Day's printed fabrics were made in long production runs, which kept the price affordable. She made the link between mass production and fine art.

ロープス , Designed by Hiroshi Awatsuji Hiroshi Awatsuji Japanese, 1929 - 1995

 One of Japan's best-known designers of printed textiles, Hiroshi Awatsuji (1929 - 1995) graduated from the design department of the Kyoto University of Fine Arts in 1950, and worked as a designer for the Kanegafuchi spinning company (now Kanebo) in Kyoto. In 1953 he moved to the Kenjiro Oishi Studio in Tokyo, where he worked for four years, and in 1958 opened his own design studio; since 1963 he has designed furnishing fabrics for Fujie Textile and others. During the 1960s his works were shown regularly in the Good Design exhibitions held annually at the Matsuya department store in Tokyo, and in 1968 Awatsuji was made a member of the Japan Design Committee, which organized them. Involved in a number of official projects, such as designing carpets and curtains for two of the pavilions at Expo '70 in Osaka, he has also designed tapestries, carpets, and furnishing fabrics for banks, hotels, and other businesses across Japan. In 1971 he received the Mainichi industrial design prize for his achievements in textile design for interiors and in 1972, the Japan Interior Designers Association prize. He received a silver prize in industrial arts at the Third Textile Triennale in Lodz, Poland, in 1978. In 1988 Awatsuji founded his own manufacturing company, Awa, through which he has produced a series of black-and-white-patterned textiles and tablewares. Awatsuji taught at the Otsuka Textile Design Institute (1963-85), and has been a professor at Tama Art University in Tokyo since 1988.

コロナ, Designed by Hiroshi Awatsuji

Design by Helen Dardik

Carrie Hansen Textile Design

Carrie Hansen Textile Design

design by Jenny Lee-Katz, Cariad Red

Design by Debbie Powell

Design by The Original Thread, Endangered Birds

Design by Emma, ‘Sketch Creative’

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