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1. Jacqueline Groag, by JohnGarner, 1957. Design CouncilArchive, University ofBrighton Design Archives

Jacqeline Groag 15 15/4/09 16:01 Page 8

School in Holland and, in Britain, the sub-cultural Feminine or gay post-Impressionistaesthetic of Bloomsbury and the OmegaWorkshops.

Although each of these were validinterpretations of twentieth century modernity,amongst the influential doyens of theInternational Modern Movement surfacepattern and decoration were dismissed assuperficial and unimportant. In Adolf Loos’polemical pamphlet of 1908, ‘Ornament andCrime’, he equates decoration with what he seesas the primitive and criminal activities of graffitiand tattooing. For Loos, decoration andornamentation equalled degeneration which hedirectly connected with women and savages andthe reverse, a lack of decoration, as the pinnacleof human achievement and conversely theremoval of ornament as cultural evolution.2 OfModernist attitudes to ‘Femininity’ in 1920sCzechoslovakia, M. Pachmanova writes that,

In 1925, in Towards a New Architecture, LeCorbusier writes of his domestic ideal of thehouse as ‘a machine for living in’, in oppositionto the traditional ‘cult of the home’ with ‘roomstoo small, a conglomeration of useless anddisparate objects ... and absurd bric-a-brac’.4

Christopher Reed views Le Corbusier’s house as‘a corrective version of Modernism’ in which the‘properly masculine engineers aestheticsuppressed design styles’5 that Le Corbusiercompared to ‘unclean orchids, ... blue hortensiasand green chrysanthemums’.6 Such attitudeswere as dismissive of the textiles of the artistsRaoul Dufy and Sonia Delaunay, and productin the French inspired Art Deco style, as those ofthe avant-garde Wiener Werkstätte.

Ursula Prokop has noted that in Austria inthe early part of the twentieth century aneducation in the applied arts was practically theonly artistic option available to women asvirtually all fine art academies refused to acceptthem.7 It is perhaps no surprise then that in theyears immediately following the end of the FirstWorld War an increasing number of the WienerWerkstätte designers were women, most ofwhom were former students of Josef Hoffmannfrom the Wien Kunstgewerbeschule (ViennaArts and Craft School). It was from then on thatwomen had ‘a virtual monopoly in determininghow the Wiener Werkstätte and its productswould be viewed’.8

Whilst they designed a wide variety ofavant-garde domestic objects, both functionaland decorative, many of their designs for theWerkstätte from the 1920s were for furnishingand fashion textiles. By that time avant-gardepattern design and the decorative arts ingeneral were caricatured by their misogynisticand patronizing opponents as ‘feminine’occupations: superficial and insignificant,something for women and dilettantes toindulge in. Christopher Reed, writing on thissubject with reference to Bloomsbury and theOmega Workshops, comments on ‘the usualpriorities of art history which have made thenotion of avant-garde domesticity an oxymoron,in the process removing Bloomsbury’s paintingsfrom the canon of modernism and refusing toconsider the murals, ceramics, textiles, andwallpapers as art at all’.9

Following the Werkstätte’s showing atthe 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale, AdolfLoos’ diatribes against its products becameincreasingly fierce and vehement. BennoReifenberg, echoing Le Corbusier, wrote of thedisplays that ‘the Wiener Werkstätte has pouredits trifling life into these showcases, the bric-a-brac of the boudoir, fashion and toys; a motleypile out of Santa Claus’s sack’.10

As a former Arts and Crafts student ofHoffmann’s at the Kunstgewerbeschule, and afemale designer of textiles for the WienerWerkstätte, Jacqueline Groag would have beena prime candidate for the disapprobation of thedevotees of the International ModernMovement. However, in her case there were alsoother, more sinister, forces at work. It was fromamongst the highly educated and culturedJewish middle classes that many of the patronsof, and leading contributors to, Vienna’sdazzling intellectual and artistic life in the earlytwentieth century were drawn, and Jacqueline,like many of the women of the Werkstätte, wasJewish. In Austria in the early twentieth centurythere was a heavy undercurrent of anti-Semitism. This became particularly clear duringthe rise of National Socialism, when theWerkstätte became the target of numerousdefamatory articles.

Given all of this, it is hardly surprising thatthe remarkable achievements of the creators ofsurface design in the early twentieth century,particularly avant-garde textile designers – whowere mainly women – should have beenobscured and marginalised, and theircontribution to the enhancement of the qualityand pleasure of people’s daily lives trivialised.This dismissive attitude towards the art ofpattern design and decoration had a long

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Czech modernist architects and designers were quick to adoptLoosian ideals, and especially in the 1920s and the beginning ofthe 1930s declared war not only on ornament, but also on allsocio-cultural phenomena that did not conform to assumed signsof progress, including Femininity.3

Geoffrey RaynerJacqueline Groag was one of the small

group of talented pioneer women designerswho were influential in the development ofModernist design and culture in early twentieth

century Europe. Many were designersof major significance – albeit from rivalschools of modernity – such as France’sCharlotte Perriand, Ireland’s EileenGray and Germany’s Marianne Brandtand a number who, like Jacqueline,remain less well known. Few receivedrecognition of their achievements intheir lifetimes, or at least not untilcomparatively late in their careers –careers that were, in the main,overshadowed by those of their male

counterparts. Jacqueline’s chosen path, that ofpattern design, only further served to obscurethe brilliance of her international achievement,particularly in the field of textile design. LesleyJackson, in her book 20th Century PatternDesign: Textile and Wallpaper Pioneers,comments that:

A great deal of this marginalization, andsubsequent neglect and trivialisation of patterndesign and decoration, has its origins in theearly twentieth century when, despite a widespectrum of schools of modernity, design andarchitectural theory was increasingly dominatedby the rational, reductive and functionalistconcepts of male architects such as Adolf Loos,Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Theirinfluence and authority continued to grow untilthe 1930s and the apotheosis of the style of theInternational Modern Movement associatedwith the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier.

Up to this point there were still a numberof particularly distinctive voices in the generalcacophony of competing versions of Modernity.However, it was the sparse minimalism ofBauhausian-influenced design and architecturethat was increasingly hailed, within mainstreamwestern European Modernist culture, as theultimate achievement. Opposed to this puritywas the perceived decadence of a moredecorative modernity, such as that associatedwith the Vienna Secession, particularly theavant-garde domesticity of the later work ofJosef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte, orthe decorative expressionism of the Amsterdam

Given the obvious appeal of textiles and wallpapers, it has alwayssurprised me that surface pattern has so often been marginalizedwithin mainstream histories of 20th-century design. While theachievements of William Morris during the 19th century arewidely recognised, very few pattern designers since then havebeen awarded the same degree of attention.1

Introduction

1. Jacqueline Groag, by JohnGarner, 1957. Design CouncilArchive, University ofBrighton Design Archives1 Lesley Jackson, 20th CenturyPattern Design: Textile andWallpaper Pioneers, MitchellBeazley, London, 2002, p.6.2 A. Sarnitz, Loos, Taschen,Cologne, 2003 pp.84-89. Loos’1908 essay, first published inEnglish in 1913, reprinted inSarnitz’s 2003 publication.3 M. Pachmanova, Conferencepaper, ‘Civilized Woman: CzechFunctionalism and theCultivation of Femininity’, DesignHistory Society/Norwich Schoolof Art and Design Conference,2003.4 Le Corbusier, Towards a NewArchitecture, trans. FrederickEtchells, Rodker, London 1927.5 Christopher Reed, Conferencepaper, ‘Designs for (Queer)Living; Amusing Design of the1920s (Bloomsbury Design)’,Design History Society/NorwichSchool of Art and DesignConference, 2003.6 Le Corbusier.7 Ursula Prokop, Das Architektenund Designer – Ehepaar, Jacquesund Jacqueline Groag, Zweivergessene Kunstler der WienerModerne, Bohlau Verlag, Wien,Köln, Weimar, 2005, p.55.8 Angela Volker, Textiles of theWiener Werkstätte 1910-1932,Thames & Hudson, London,1994, p.116.9 Christopher Reed, BloomsburyRooms, Modernism, Subculture,and Domesticity, published forThe Bard Graduate Center forStudies in the Decorative Arts,Design and Culture, New York,by Yale University Press, NewHaven and London, 2004.10 Benno Reifenberg, ‘West –Kunst – Gewerbe, Zurinternationalen Ausstellung inParis’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 5August 1925.


I trained as a textile designer whilstworking in England as Jacqueline Groag’sassistant during the Second World War. Prior tothis, my association with Jacqueline’s circle wentback many years to pre-war Vienna. I come froman assimilated Austrian Jewish family who, likemany others, had converted to Christianity. Theywere intellectual and cultured people: my uncle– my mother’s brother – Professor Hans Kelsen,one of the twentieth century’s leadinginternational jurists, had written theconstitution of the first Austrian republic, andmy parents, Richard and Gertrude Weiss, weregenerous and enlightened patrons of the arts,especially of newly emerging young sculptorsand architects.

My first encounter with the Groags was in1937, when my parents commissionedJacqueline’s husband, Jacques, to design a

combined studio-bedsitting room forme. Jacques was a gentle and sensitiveman, whom both my mother and I verymuch admired. He was a well-knownModernist architect and had trainedand worked in Vienna with thelegendary Adolf Loos, originator of thewell-known slogan ‘ornament is crime’.This sentiment did not always holdtrue for his students though, for thecushions of the sofa-bed Jacques haddesigned for me were covered with afloral textile designed by Jacqueline.Another architect from that time,whom my family knew well and whose

work we respected, was the handsome youngHungarian architect Stefan Buzas. A good friendof the Groags, Stefan was to play an influentialrole in Jacqueline’s and my lives much later inEngland.

I was eighteen when Jacques designedthe studio-bedsitting room for me, and thatSeptember I joined the preliminary course at theWien Kunstgewerbeschule, then under thedirection of Professor Josef Hoffmann. He was a

revered Secessionist architect, designer andfounder of the Wiener Werkstätte. I hadattended the school for only two terms when, inMarch 1938, the political union of Germany andAustria, the Anschluss, was declared and theGerman army entered Vienna. When I returned,at the beginning of the summer term, to theKunstgewerbeschule, members of the Nazispecial police force, the Schutzstaffel or SS, werestanding at the entrance. All non-Aryans wererefused admission, and my brief time at theSchule came to an abrupt end.

Until then I had never had any personalcontact with Hoffmann, so I was extremelysurprised when, quite out of the blue, I receiveda telephone call from him, asking me, withoutany explanation, to urgently meet him thatafternoon in the Belvedere, a park near myhome. I was so in awe of him I accepted hisstrange invitation without question. Uponmeeting we sat on a bench and, to myamazement, he grasped my hand and made meswear never to reveal to anyone my liaison withhim. Astounded by this bizarre request, Ipromised faithfully to carry it out, whereuponhe quickly and furtively departed, and I neithersaw nor heard anything of him again.

He had a certain reputation amongest thestudents and was probably concerned that anyaffairs he may have had with Jewish studentsshould not come to the attention of the SS, as a sexual relationship between an Aryan andnon-Aryan – Rassenschande (racial disgrace) –was a serious criminal offence under the Naziapartheid. My only explanation for this oddencounter is that in his anxiety to cover histracks he was asking the same thing of all theJewish girls who had recently studied at theKunstgewerbeschule. I was probably a case ofmistaken identity or, perhaps even, confusedanticipation! Both my brothers left Austria soonafter this but, before leaving, my elder brotherThomas, in order to get me a British passport,arranged a marriage of convenience for me witha British theatrical producer, Herbert Williger.

Karin’s Story

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afterlife which continued until recent times.Post Second World War, the defeat of

Fascism and the retreat of authoritarian andtotalitarian attitudes created an environment inwhich art movements such as Surrealism,Abstract Expressionism and the increasinginfluence of popular culture were able tocontribute to a more relaxed and inclusiveattitude to pattern and decoration. Followingthe trauma of the war, with its tight controls andgeneral deprivation and limitations, there was a reaction against the narrow dictates offunctionalist design and an eagerness to indulgein colour and pattern that continued into the 1970s.

Jacqueline was extremely well placed totake a leading role in this remarkable post-warrenaissance of pattern design, particularly thatof textiles. Fortunately, she and her husband,the Modernist architect Jacques Groag, fleeingthe Nazis in 1939, chose to settle in London.Although the anglophile Loos had praised whathe saw as the restrained elegance andfunctionalist qualities of British design, theBritish were never entirely at ease with thestandardised mass-produced functional productsand reductive style associated with the ideals ofthe International Modern Movement. They hadalways had a penchant for the graphic anddecorative arts, particularly two-dimensionallinear design and, since the late eighteenthcentury, had led the world in the manufacture oftextiles, especially printed cottons.

On her arrival in Britain Jacqueline foundherself in a sympathetic environment withsupport and semi-official backing frominfluential individuals such as Gordon Russelland Charles Reilly, both later knighted for theircontributions to architecture and design. In fact,large numbers of intellectual and artisticémigrés from Eastern Europe were activelyencouraged and embraced with the BritishGovernment’s open support.11 The perilous stateof the British economy in the early 1940s meantthat exports, and in particular the overseastextile market, were an important financialcontributor to the war effort as well as a usefulform of propaganda. It was recognized thatthere was a need to improve the standard ofdesign for the export market and Jacqueline,with an established international reputation,was welcomed as an important asset.Throughout the 1940s she was a leadingdesigner of both furnishing and fashion textilesin Britain, and her translation and developmentof her work – particularly that for theWerkstätte – combined with her remarkableoriginality, largely set the standard for the 1950s.

In the years between 1937 and 1946,Jacqueline’s path and that of Karin Williger, a younger Jewish woman from Vienna, ranparallel, occasionally crossing and re-crossing,until eventually they intertwined for a fewyears. Karin was the only assistant thatJacqueline is known to have employed. Her first-hand account of those extraordinary yearsconveys something of the dramaticcircumstances of the time, and the ever-presentsense of fear and danger that people in theirposition learnt to live and work with, and eventually overcome.

2-5. Karin Willigerphotographed by RobertHaas at St Goddard’s College,Plainfield, Vermont, USA, in 1939. Haas, with whomKarin had been romanticallyinvolved in Vienna, wasteaching calligraphy andphotography at the college at that time. Courtesy of ZacManasseh11 Andrew Marr, A History ofModern Britain,Macmillan, 2007.


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22. Design for printed cotton nursery fabric for F.W. Grafton, 1945.

23. Jacqueline, circa 1940, in the Isokon Lawn Road flat she and Jacques rented from Jack Pritchard. Her highlymade-up appearanceresembles that of her dolls.Karin Williger distinctlyremembered the finelypleated white culottetrousers that Jacquelinefrequently wore at that time.Courtesy of the Victoria andAlbert Museum


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September 1946 and by the end of Decemberhad been visited by 1,432,546 people.78 Anambitious blockbuster survey of British goodsand manufacturers, the exhibition was avictorious propaganda exercise whose aims wereto demonstrate the high quality of Britishindustrial design and so boost the vital exporttrade, while simultaneously lifting the morale ofa public long deprived of consumer goods anddesperate for luxury and glamour. Wartimerestrictions were still in place, however, andmost of the goods so enticingly displayed werefor export only, prototypes of what might be, orgoods which would be available to the public atsome later, but unspecified, date. A cynical andwar-weary public wryly renamed the exhibition,Britain Can Make It but Britain Can’t Have It.

Three of Jacqueline’s textiles for the JohnLewis Partnership are listed in the exhibition’scatalogue79 and there are others listed forcompanies she is known to have done muchwork for but not credited to any designer. Thewell-known fashion textile First Night, producedby F.W. Grafton, was almost certainly exhibitedand was subsequently first published in theDecember 1946 issue of The Ambassador. Itsdesign was a witty interpretation of a first nightat the Paris Opera, originally designed in 1937, itis thought, for Schiaparelli.80 First Night was alsomarketed in America where it was known asGala Night. Another probable candidate is aprinted cotton, circa 1945, patterned with anallegory of peace, with doves holding olivebranches, green shoots sprouting in pots,toppling castles from a chess set and sunflowerswith smiling faces. In the Cottage Kitchen in theModern Mining Village of the exhibition’sFurnished Rooms Section another textile,apparently in Jacqueline’s hand, andincorporating some of her signature motifs –Wiener Werkstätte type tulips, Paul Kleeinfluenced stick-like stems and leaves, smallsketchy flower clusters and childlike buildings –is used for curtains. The room was the mostpopular of the room sets with visitors, three-quarters of whom were from the ‘ArtisanClass’.81 The manufacturer of this textile, T. & A.Wardle, was a company Jacqueline is notrecorded as having worked for. It should benoted, however, that Jacques, as the designer ofthe main textile section for Britain Can Make It,would have ensured Jacqueline’s textiles weregiven a high profile throughout.82

The years between 1946 and 1956 werethe high point of Jacqueline’s post-war career. In 1946 she received the accolade of one of herdress fabrics being chosen by the couturierEdward Molyneux for a collection of dresses he

Robin Day’s incomes from teaching at that time,Lucienne felt able to take ‘a rather snooty line’towards those involved in the ‘rag trade’.75

By the mid-1940s Jacqueline was arguablythe most influential designer of surface patternin Britain. She ran her own studio from aprestigious address at 2 Albany Terrace, Regent’sPark. employed Karin Williger as her assistantand was regularly visited by representatives ofthe leading textile converters andmanufacturers, either to buy or to commissiondesigns from her. In May 1945 the CentralInstitute of Art and Design and the NationalGallery jointly held an influential exhibition,Historical and British Wallpapers, at the SuffolkGallery, London. Considering the limitations ofwartime restrictions, the exhibition’s cataloguewas a particularly well-designed and illustratedcolour production, which advocated the futureuse of pattern and colour in post-war homes. In the Contemporary section, designs by artistssuch as Graham Sutherland and Edward Bawdenwere shown alongside the work of designers.Jacqueline exhibited at least three designs, one of which was a beautiful, slightly reworked,floral pattern from 1929, which still remainsfresh in style and concept.76

In 1945, the rather tired trade journal,International Textiles, was transformed by the émigrés Hans and Elsbeth Juda into aninfluential post-war export magazine, TheAmbassador. The following year the magazineran several features on Jacqueline. ‘PrehistoricTopics’ was exclusively illustrated with herdesigns and ‘Jacqueline Groag Designs’ wasdevoted to her work. Throughout the later 1940sexamples of Jacqueline’s work were regularly

featured in the magazine and she wascommissioned to design covers for theDecember 1948 and the February andAugust 1950 issues. Elsbeth Juda,recalling Jacqueline at that time,remembers her as not conventionallybeautiful, but ‘extremely chic andelegant in an unconventional way’.77

The Britain Can Make Itexhibition of 1946 was the first and,apart from the Festival of Britain, thebiggest design extravaganza of thepost-war era. Held in the galleries ofthe Victoria and Albert Museum, whichhad been emptied for the duration ofthe war, the exhibition opened on 24

33. F.W. Graftonadvertisement for First Night.

34. Printed cotton dress fabricwith allegorical peace motifs,produced by F.W. Grafton,circa 1945.

35. Textile display at theBritain Can Make Itexhibition, Victoria andAlbert Museum, London,1946. The display wasdesigned by Jacques Groag.Design Council Archive,University of Brighton, DesignArchives75 Lesley Jackson, Robin &Lucienne Day: Pioneers ofContemporary Design, MitchellBeazley, London, 2001, p.XX.Lucienne repeated thisinformation in an interview withthe authors in August 2008.76 Victoria and Albert Museum,Department of Prints andDrawings (DPP).77 Elsbeth Juda, interview withthe authors, May 2008.78 The Council of IndustrialDesign Annual Report, 1946-47.79 Britain Can Make It (BCMI)Exhibition Catalogue, Council ofIndustrial Design, HMSO, 1946,p.35.80 Timmers.81 Mass Observation, ID 903/1LA,no.1 and Preliminary Report onthe BCMI.82 Council of Industrial DesignArchive, BCMI. 1945-1950: Britain Can Make It

The Rayon Design Centre, the Kardomah Restaurants


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30-31. Three Cover designs byJacqueline for TheAmbassador magazine,published in December 1948,February and August 1950.The 1948 cover wassubsequently available as aprinted dress fabric producedby F.W. Grafton.


physician-in-chief, Dr Ruy Lopez, says that Lopez had

Over four hundred years ago these‘murmurs’, to the dismay of Elizabeth and herministers, eventually ended in Lopez’s unjustimprisonment, torture and execution. LikeLopez, Jacqueline was a successful émigré Jewand a Christian convert, but certainly no suchhorrors could be visited on her or her fellowémigrés in Britain in the 1940s. Although anti-Semitism had by then been largely drivenunderground, it was still widely prevalent and‘murmurs’ may well have contributed to theerosion of her later career and subsequenteffacing of her reputation. At the time neitherthe jealousy, anti-Semitism or xenophobicattitudes that Reilly’s, Holtom’s and The TextileManufacturer’s articles were clearly intended torefute, or the trauma of wartime emigration,had any apparent effect on Jacqueline or herwork. The same was not so for Jacques.

During the war Jacqueline’s studio was inan apartment in Albany Terrace, near London’sRegent’s Park. Her assistant, Karin Williger, had a room there that she used as a studio-bedsitting room and there was a spare room forguests. Jacqueline moved her studio in 1945, butKarin stayed on, sharing the apartment with herfriend Susan Cox. In a letter that year to herhusband, the architect Anthony Cox, thenserving in the army in India, Susan described theAlbany Terrace apartment and its recent history.In the letter she recalls ‘Mr and Mrs Groag, whowere friends of ‘Stef’s’ (the émigré architectStefan Buzas) who, like the Groags, was thenliving in the Isokon Lawn Road flats. Apparentlythe Albany Terrace apartment had originallybeen intended as a home for the Groags, who,Susan wrote:

‘Very ill’ and ‘very nervy’ are theoperative words here. Stefan Buzas’ daughter,Kate Irvine, who from a very young child knewJacques and Jacqueline well, describes him as a‘delicate plant’ who had not transplanted toEngland very successfully. He was a fragilepersonality, who seemed to her, as a teenager,deeply depressed.88 In the memorial lecture

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… obtained, in spite of professional jealousy and racial prejudice, a largepractice among persons of distinction, … he reached the highest place in hisprofession … it was only natural that there should have been murmurs againsta Jewish foreigner who had outdone his English rivals.86

… have been trying for a long time to move somewhere larger than their LawnRd flat,...at the last minute Mr G, who has been very ill and is now very nervy,jibbed at the noise of the Marylebone Road traffic, and instead of taking thewhole flat, Mrs G took the nicest room as her studio and suggested that Karin,who was going to work with her, should have the adjoining room…87

had designed for Her Majesty the Queen whenPrincess Elizabeth. Photographs of the Princesswearing the dress were published in the popularmagazine Illustrated in September 1946.83 Thefabric, produced by F.W. Grafton, was a versionof Jacqueline’s classic tulip motif that could havecome straight from the Wiener Werkstätte itself.

Molyneux had earlier used fabricsdesigned by the Czech émigré LidaAscher for his 1942 export couturedress collection and in 1947 he used a textile, designed by the painterGerald Wilde, from Ascher’s celebratedcollection of artist designed textiles,for Princess Elizabeth’s wardrobe forthe Royal family’s tour of SouthAfrica.84 It is probable that the dressmade from Jacqueline’s tulip fabricwas also part of the same collection.Once again there is a tantalizing nearconvergence of Jacqueline’s and theAschers’ professional activities.

Jacques and Jacqueline receivedBritish citizenship in 1947 and that yearbecame Members of the Society ofIndustrial Artists. The June 1947 issueof Art and Industry contains an articleby the textile manufacturer anddesigner Gerald Holtom, ‘The Printed

Fabric, Designs by Jacqueline Groag, MSIA’ inwhich, apart from his enthusiasm forJacqueline’s work, Holtom discusses at somelength the history of emigrant craftsmen inBritain and the importation of alien conceptsand styles. He finds that although the

This justification of immigration is anecho of both Charles Reilly’s article and that inThe Textile Manufacturer. In those, however, a greater emphasis is placed on Jacqueline’sCzech origins, which Holtom ignores. In the1940s, Austria’s relationship with Germany wasconsidered, at the very least, dubious andJacqueline’s Viennese background is hardly everreferred to; her Jewishness never at all.Whatever Holtom optimistically felt ‘may beproved from our history’, Lytton Stracheyconversely, writing of the ‘hideous tragedy’ of the downfall of Elizabeth I’s Portuguese

…fruits of original thought are often at first received with hostility andmisunderstanding, it is very much to the credit therefore of certainenterprising textile printers in this country that they recognised both theoriginality and the value of the work of Madame Jacqueline Groag. The resultis that British textile is happily enriched. But let me first of all dispose of a falsenotion, which is widely held today about the employment of foreigndesigners and technicians in England. Many people consider that suchemployment means the introduction of ideas and motifs strange to ourtradition. That this need not be so may be proved from our history.’85

37. Three fabrics designed byJacqueline for F.W. Graftonand Hill Brown and publishedin Gerald Holtom’s article inArt & Industry, 1947.

36. Princess Elizabeth,wearing a dress made withone of Jacqueline’s WienerWerkstätte inspired designs,‘Tulip’, for F.W. Grafton, 1946.Courtesy of the Victoria andAlbert Museum

38. Pen and ink drawing byKarin Williger of Susan Cox at Jacqueline’s Albany Terraceapartment, circa 1946.Courtesy of Joanna Cox83 The cover of Illustrated,September 1946.84 Photograph in Illustrated, April1947.85 Gerald Holtom, ‘The PrintedFabric – Designs By JacquelineGroag’, Art & Industry, June1947, pp.174-179.86 Lytton Strachey, Elizabeth andEssex: A Tragic History, PenguinBooks Edition, 1950, reprinted1985, pp.48-62.87 Susan Cox, letter to AnthonyCox, 1945, now in thepossession of their daughter,Joanna Cox.

39. A modified version of Jacqueline’s textile design of urns and columns for the Rayon Design Centre, producedcommercially by David Whitehead, 1951. Collection H. KirkBrown III and Jill A. Wiltse


Commissions for exclusive hand-printedlengths of fabric created for a particular purposehad also formed the basis of Jacqueline’s successwith the Parisian couture houses. A fascinatingwindow on her thinking on the design oftextiles, their production and the manufacturingprocess, is given in the article on her work in TheTextile Manufacturer:

The image of a design as a ‘dormantpaper sketch’ which is ‘born’ from the hand ofthe designer and subsequently becomes ‘realand alive’ through the collaboration of designerand craftsman is a perfect example of theanimatism with which Jacques and Jacquelineendowed their work. Equally, ‘lovely’ and‘harmonious’ provide the key to Jacqueline’scommission for the newly created Rayon DesignCentre.

Dennis Lennon had been commissioned in 1948 to sympathetically convert a largeeighteenth century house in Upper GrosvenorStreet, in London’s Mayfair district, as theheadquarters and showcase for the rayonindustry, considered in the early post-war yearsan essential part of the all important exporttrade. The house had an elaborate neo-classicalinterior, the plasterwork of the ceilings beingespecially decorative. Lennon’s conversion wasparticularly notable for the overall design planfor the new interior that was:

Jacqueline was commissioned to designtextiles for the interiors whose colours anddesigns would harmonise with and reflect thoseof the neo-classical plasterwork. She designed a number of textiles for various rooms, one of which had architectural motifs of urns andcolumns incorporated in its design. A modifiedversion of this, produced in 1951 by the textilemanufacturer David Whitehead, has since

…meticulously pursued without any visible conflict with the equallymeticulous respect for the existing building. Indeed the two were broughttogether by the sensitive colouring of the plasterwork, which was in turnrelated to the colours used for the furniture and furnishings.92

Mrs Groag considers that the designer should design for the actual fabric,heavy or light, opaque or slightly transparent, matt or shiny. Indeed she madedesigns and hand-blocked printed them herself for curtains for particularrooms … the design has to be put on paper, but the paper should beforgotten and the technique considered of the method of production. Manydesigners think their work is spoiled during reproduction but Mrs Groagconsiders that the design is no good if it is not reproducible. After the designis born the designer should, if possible, go to the workshop, see thecraftsmen, weaver or printer, explain, discuss and collaborate, going intodetails with great care and considering colour schemes. It would mean timeand trouble but there would be benefit to all and the dormant paper sketchwould become real and alive. The user wants beauty and the textile designershould try to provide lovely things for a harmonious life.91

Buzas gave in 1962 on Jacques, he sadly recalledJacques’ disappointment in England.89 Despitehis formidable pre-war reputation as anarchitect and the help he had received fromfriends such as Gordon Russell, Jacques’ careerfailed to prosper. His later years were spentfighting increasing psychological problems andJacqueline, perforce, became the principalbreadwinner and bearer of the burdens of dailylife. It was not until the 1950s that the pressuresof life as émigrés finally eased and Jacques andJacqueline were able to move to a house inClifton Gardens in the St John’s Wood area ofLondon. After the traumas of emigration andwar, stability and continuity were essential tothem and they continued to live there togetheruntil Jacques’ death in 1962.

By 1947 Jacqueline had made a number of influential friends and allies in the designworld. Prominent amongst these was theRussian émigré architect and exhibition designerMisha Black, co-founder with Milner Grey in1945 of the Design Research Unit (DRU), the firstBritish design consultancy. Another was theémigré Viennese interior, exhibition andindustrial designer Gaby Schreiber. Both gave a series of important commissions to Jacquelineat the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s,which became the mainstay of her later career.The first prestigious project she was involvedwith in Britain was the commission she receivedin 1948 from the architect Dennis Lennon fortextiles and colour schemes for the new RayonDesign Centre in London’s West End. ForJacqueline such collaborations betweenarchitects, designers and artists in a synthesis ofarchitecture and the fine and applied arts, theGesamtkunstwerk, had been a familiar part ofher work in Vienna. Throughout the 1930s sheand Jacques had successfully co-operated on theinteriors of his architectural projects in Austria,and Josef Hoffmann, whom she considered thegreatest influence on her work, had foundedthe Wiener Werkstätte on such a premise.Charles Reilly wrote of Jacqueline in 1942 that:

one of the charming things she used to do, both in Prague and in Vienna,which is not a general practice yet in this country, was not only to make thedesigns for, but to print with hand blocks her own curtains for architects, so that these latter could put new and unique curtains into their own andtheir clients houses… I can imagine nothing more interesting than to askJacqueline Groag to design and print for me special curtains for roomsaccording to their character, lighting and use and my own very varyingtemperament … apparently in Czechoslovakia and Austria this was not anunusual thing before the war.90

40-41. Artwork for twodesigns by Jacquelineshowing her use of collageand overlays in a variety ofmedia, 1950s. Collection H.Kirk Brown III and Jill A.Wiltse88 Irvine.89 Buzas, Jacques Groagobituary, AAD.90 Reilly.91 The Textile Manufacturer.92 Toni del Renzio, DennisLennon’s biographical entry inContemporary Designers, ed.Ann Lee Morgan, MacmillanPublishers Ltd, London, 1984,pp.357-358.

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48. The Festival of Britain InformationCentre at Swan & Edgar’s departmentstore, London, designed by JacquesGroag, with textiles designed byJacqueline and printed by the CalicoPrinters Association.

49. After the Festival David Whiteheadproduced a commercial version ofJacqueline’s textile for the InformationCentre on roller-printed rayon. It provedvery popular with the public. CollectionH. Kirk Brown III and Jill A. Wiltse

50. The artwork for Kiddies Town, awallpaper produced by John Line, 1951, inred on a white ground and exhibited atthe Festival of Britain. Kiddies Townshows Jacqueline’s debt to Paul Klee andillustrates Reilly’s comments that in herdesign repertoire Jacqueline ‘brings backthe freshness and outlook of a child’.Collection H. Kirk Brown III and Jill A.Wiltse

51. A textile design related to Jacqueline’sscreen for the Festival of Britain is roller-printed on a spun rayon fabric distinctiveof that used by Haworth Fabrics, circa1953. Collection H. Kirk Brown III and JillA. Wiltse


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66. Paper strike-off for one of Jacqueline’s designsintended to be printed on Ardil, a man-made fibre. Ardil was developed by ICI and printed at Liberty ofLondon’s Merton Abbey and Langley Printworks.

67. ‘Gowing Up’, a design sheet for BOAC, 1959.Collection H. Kirk Brown III and Jill A. Wiltse

68. Artwork forAlexandretta, a laminatedesign for Warerite whichrelies on her naive child-likedrawing and is based onher doll collection.Collection H. Kirk Brown IIIand Jill A. Wiltse.

69. Lilliput, a small scaledesign for a laminateproduced by Warerite in1960 and later by Harrison& Sons as Parade. CollectionH. Kirk Brown III and Jill A.Wiltse.

70. Harrison & Sons salesbrochure, circa 1962,illustrating Jacqueline’sJumping Jacks design.131 Ibid.132 Ibid.

white. Jacqueline’s records also show anothershipping company she worked for, The BritishHolland and Channel Line, although she gives noother information.131

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s thedesign of plastic laminates became an increasingpart of Jacqueline’s work. As well as those forparticular commissions, such as that for BritishRail, she also designed commercial ranges forWarerite, Harrison and Sons and the Swedishcompany, Perstorp, who later merged withWarerite. The range for Warerite wasparticularly successful and included the well-known and popular designs Alexandretta andLilliput. Her extensive range for Harrison andSons was released for sale in 1963.132 During theearly 1960s Jacqueline’s work became lessfocused and, other than that for John Lewis, it consisted of fewer commissions from a muchmore varied client group.


19. Printed rayon satin dressfabric designed for F.W.Grafton & Co. Ltd, c.1946. The design of this textile isbased on the Island of Arbe,on the Dalmatian coast. This Italian/Croatian island was an inspiration forJacqueline for numeroustextiles and wallpapers fromthe late 1920s onwards.

20. A design illustrated in The Ambassador, 1946. The article comments: ‘textile designs by JacquelineGroag shows her tendency to take inspiration from reallife, rather than slavishly copying reality’.

21. A printed cotton fabric for Grafton with a Calpretafinish. Carefree Calpreta,marketed through the CalicoPrinters Association, promisedto remain crumple free,non-shrink and with a permanentsheen, glaze or lustre thatwould make the post-warhousewife’s life easier andmore fun. Calpreta was one of a number of textile finishesdeveloped by chemicalcompanies to make domesticlife for women less arduous as lives became more busy anddomestic staff less common.


Jacqeline Groag 15 15/4/09 16:02 4

44. Duet, a printed cottondress fabric by AssociatedAmerican Artists, 1954.


47. Puppet Ballet wasproduced for the US marketby Associated AmericanArtists in 1953 as a printedcotton dress fabric in their‘Signature’ range. LikeKiddies Town it illustratesJacqueline’s deceivingly naïvedrawing combined with a sophisticated patternstructure. Collection H. KirkBrown III and Jill A. Wiltse


jacqeline groag 15 15/4/09 16:01 page 8€¦ · increasingly fierce and vehement. benno reifenberg,...

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