Marianne Straub

Marianne Straub (born 1909, Amriswil, Switzerland) was one of the leading designers of textiles in Britain during the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

Biography

She was born in the village of Amriswil, Switzerland on 23 September 1909. Her father was a textile merchant so she was soon attracted to a career in textiles. She studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. Her second and third years were devoted to hand weaving and textiles. To improve her skills Straub later decided to move to the textile town of Bradford, England. She arrived in the north England town in 1932 and studied her trade at the Bradford Technical College.

After finishing her course she was invited to work at Ethel Mairet's Gospels studio at Ditchling where she developed her hand loom techniques. By the mid-1930s Straub was working as a consultant designer for the Welsh milling industry where she learnt the skills of mass production. In 1937 she joined the firm of Helios as head designer where she developed a range of woven and printed fabrics based on her own designs. In 1950 Straub later joined the firm of Warners who were based in Braintree, Essex.

Straub moved to the north Essex village of Great Bardfield in 1953. Great Bardfield during the 1950s was famous for its community of talented artists (which included Edward Bawden) and Straub became friends with most of them. During the 1950s the Great Bardfield Artists organised a series of large "open house" exhibitions which attracted national press attention. Positive reviews and the novelty of viewing art works in the artists own homes led to thousands visiting the remote village during the summer exhibitions of 1954, 1955 and 1958. As well as these shows the Great Bardfield Artists held several touring exhibitions of their work in 1957, 1958 and 1959. On retirement from Warners in 1971 she left Great Bardfield and moved to Cambridge.

As well as her design work, Straub was also an important textile teacher. She began to teach at the Central School of Art, London in 1956. She later taught at Hornsey College of Art and later at the Royal College of Art. Straub wrote a book on hand weaving and was the subject of a biography by Mary Schoeser. She was awarded the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce's distinction Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 1972.^[1] Straub never married and died childless in Switzerland in 1994.

Notes and references

1. ↑ "Past Members of the RDI Faculty". The RSA. Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. May 2007. Retrieved 2008-02-10. 

• Hand Weaving and Cloth Design by Marianne Straub, Viking, 1977
• Marianne Straub by Mary Schoeser, Design Council, London, 1984
• Artists at the Fry edited by Martin Salisbury, Ruskin Press, Cambridge, 2003
• The Women of Bardfield (exhibition catalogue) by Frances Spalding, Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, 2010

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