Essays

Modernism and Fabric: Art and the Tirocchi Textiles

 

Before 1910, Bianchini had become interested in Viennese design, traveling to the city to purchase sketches made for him by Austrian artists. Some of these he had printed on silk as early as 1907-08 [fig. 150]. He encouraged artists in his own studio to produce work in the Viennese manner and also to design in the new bold colors favored by fauvist painters after 1905. In 1910, when the firm was at the height of its influence, this forward-looking manufacturer printed the first of Dufy's designs for the firm.(16) On March 1, 1912, with Poiret's permission, Bianchini signed Dufy to an exclusive contract, which was to be paid with royalties on sales, an arrangement very unusual for a time when designers normally sold designs to manufacturers outright. This arrangement would continue until Dufy left the company in 1928. In 1912, Dufy was still printing from some of the blocks he had used at the Petite Usine, which came along with him after his work for Poiret; and he was developing many others with the same striking graphic qualities. During the first three years of his contract, Dufy produced more than three hundred sketches, only a few of which were actually produced.(17)

Many of Dufy's most successful patterns employed the new technique of "discharge" printing. The fabric was first dyed "in the piece" after weaving, where formerly the yarn had been dyed before being woven. The richest hues were obtainable only in this manner. Dufy's simple and striking designs were then overprinted onto the ground. The fabric was discharged with bleach to remove the base color wherever necessary, and in the same process bold new dyes were applied according to the patterns cut into the woodblocks [fig. 151]. Dufy's designs had widespread appeal. Paul Poiret continued to use Dufy's patterns, now produced by Bianchini, Férier (the name change occurred upon the death of Atuyer in 1912; the firm today is called Bianchini-Férier). Simple black-and-white prints created by Dufy endured for many years in the company's line. Business records in the Tirocchi Archive show that Anna ordered a printed silk textile with Dufy-like black and white flowers [figs. 151-152] in January of 1923 from a tiny sample sent her by the company. In the same year she purchased a black-and-orange velvet with the same appealing graphic quality [fig. 153]. Neither textile was among those for which Dufy was paid, according to Bianchini, Férier's records, but each demonstrates the power of Dufy's designs to affect the entire line of the company.

In 1951, RISD's Museum purchased a collection of more than four hundred silks from the Lyon firm of Guard Frères, all of which came from Atuyer, Bianchini, Férier and date to its early years. Dufy's hand is evident in a number of them, all but a few of which are printed on plain-weave silk. Thanks to the survival of the Bianchini, Férier records, many of the RISD textiles have been found to date to the period of Bianchini's first experiments with modern design. The RISD textiles are samples for salesmen, who carried them along as they traversed their territories, or sent them to clients in book form [figs. 154-155]. In Anna Tirocchi's case, her contact (called a "drummer") was J. J. Hannock, who would frequently visit the shop to show his sample swatches or to deliver fabrics by hand from New York. When new sample books came out, Hannock requested that Anna throw the outdated versions away. Unfortunately for this history, she did dispose of something for once in her life, and none were found in the shop when its contents were presented to RISD in 1989.

 

 

printer version
(will open in
new window)

 
 

< back

 
 

continue >