Gunta Stölzl - Bauhaus Master : Literature : Stölzl on Bauhaus Weaving

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Gunta Stölzl - The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workhop, 1931 : Translation of part of the article "Die Entwicklung der Bauhausweberei", published in the journal "bauhaus", July 1931.

The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workshop
Gunta Stölzl

The transfer to Dessau brought the weaving workshop, as well as all the other workshops and departments, new and healthier conditions. We were able to acquire the most varied loom systems (Kontermarsch, shaft machine, Jacquard loom, carpet-knotting frame) and in addition our own dyeing facilities. The aim of the general education was to loosen up the student and to provide him with the broadest possible base and with a direction for a systematic approach to his work.

From now on, there begins a clear and final distinction between two areas of education that initially were fused with each other: The development of functional textiles for use in interiors (prototypes for industry) and speculative experimentation with materials, form, and colour in tapestries and rugs.
Functional textiles are necessarily subject to accurate technical, and limited, but nevertheless variable design requirements. The technical specifications, resistance to wear and tear, flexibility, elasticity, permeability or impermeability to light, fastness to colour and light, etc., were dealt with systematically according to the final use of the material.

The aesthetic qualifications, the demand for beauty, the effect of woven fabrics in a room and the feel of it, are much more difficult to define objectively. Whether lustrous or flat, whether soft or severe, whether strong or subdued in texture, whether coloured brightly or softly, all this depends on the kind of room, its functions, and not least of all on individual needs.

The tool of the weaver the material, colour, and the weave - are subject to constant technical improvement. Wool, silk, cotton, the synthetic fibers (cellophane) are continuously being improved by better breeding and cultivating methods, mechanical treatment (process of spinning, refinement), new scientific inventions, and by new dyeing methods. The vitality of the material forces people working with textiles to try out new things daily, to readjust time and again, to live with their subject, to intensify it, to climb from experience to experience in order to do justice to the needs of our time . Experience shows that we are advancing along useful paths: The cultural influence of our work on the textile industry and on other workshops is clearly in evidence today. Those who have been trained by us are now occupying top positions in mechanical weaving mills and workshops and also in schools.

Only active participation in solving the changing problems of life and home makes it possible to keep the educational and cultural work of the Bauhaus weaving workshop vital and progressive. Woven fabrics in a room are equally important in the larger entity of architecture as the colour of the walls, the furniture and household equipment. They have to serve their purposes, have to be integrated, and have to fulfil with ultimate precision the requirements we place on colour, material, and texture. The possibilities are unlimited. Understanding of and feeling for the artistic problems of architecture will show us the right way.

Gunta Stölzl - The Development of the Bauhaus Weaving Workhop, 1931

Gunta Stölzl - Weaving at the Bauhaus, 1926 : The following article was published in the Bauhaus journal "Offset", No. 7, 1926.

Is the woven fabric one of those items that present a challenge for the creative efforts of man?
Yes! Because a woven fabric is an aesthetic whole, a composition of form, colour and material
as a whole. In all fields of design today there is a quest for law and order. And we too, in the
weaving workshop, have set ourselves the task of investigating the basic elements of our
particular field. While at the beginning of our Bauhaus work we started with image precepts -
a fabric was so to speak a picture made of wool - today we know that a fabric is always an object
of use and is determined equally by its end use and the factors of its production. These factors are:
the loose threads which can only be made into a definite surface by the arrangement to
which they are subjected;
a multiplicity of interlocking threads which produce the sculpture of the surface;
the colour intensified or toned down through gloss or dullness;
the material, whose characteristics limit us in its use.

The fabric has to meet further requirements: it has to be a surface and always has to
have the effect of a surface. This does not imply that elements of a static, dynamic,
sculptural, functional, constructional, and spatial nature are excluded from
consideration. These elements count and are subject to the laws of plane geometry.
Today we do not weave flowers and fruit, figurative scenes and architectural perspectives,
and neither do we devote ourselves to ornamental decoration. As said before, fabric design
is concerned with designing surface structure that relates to surrounding things, adapts
itself and fits in. On the one hand it is the flexibility of this surface which characterizes
the fabric, namely the fact that a curtain, a bedspread, a pillow can easily change its place
in the room; on the other hand there is the nature of the material, rough or smooth, stiff or
soft, light or heavy, dull or glossy.

Since today mechanical weaving has not yet been developed to the point of incorporating
all the possibilities of hand weaving, and since the developing creative person needs to
know all these possibilities, we concern ourselves mainly with handloom weaving. Only
work at the hand loom allows the kind of latitude for an idea to be developed from
experiment to experiment until it is defined and clarified to the point that sample
products can be handed to industry for mechanical reproduction.

Since the applications of fabrics, and hence the problems involved, are so varied,
only a few are selected here:
A cloth or a curtain - these are easily movable and adaptable objects to suit
individual tastes and requirements of colour and form.
A carpet can be designed as an integral part of the room and as such can have
a space-determining function, but it can also be thought of as an independent
" thing in itself", whose colour and formal language can express any surface theme.
Upholstery fabric, being fixed in space and being confined to a specific purpose,
should have an attractive textural surface effect.

Tapestries and wall hangings are not commodities. Other standards apply to these;
they belong in the area of free artistic expression, yet are determined by the
process of weaving.

Weaving is primarily a woman's field of work. The play with form and colour,
an enhanced sensitivity to material, the capacity of adaptation, rhythmical
rather than logical thinking - are frequent female traits of character
stimulating women to creative activity in the field of textiles.

Gunta Stölzl - Weaving at the Bauhaus, 1926

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