Cutting edge and retro, simultaneously

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2003 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Pierre Pozier (1880-1952), who joined the fabric house F. Schumacher and Company in 1899 as a textile designer (later serving as president and secretary), possessed that rare combination of a gifted aesthetic eye and a sharp intuition for business. Additionally, as the nephew of the founder of the company, Frederick Schumacher, he was lucky enough to be born into the right family at the right time. He spent part of each year in Paris where he enjoyed contact with some of the leading designers of the day. Thus, at the internationally acclaimed Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes, held in Paris from April through October 1925, he not only knew what type of cutting-edge designs would be featured, but had the marketing savvy to ride the crest of the wave of publicity before he introduced some twenty new designs to the American public at Schumacher's New York City showroom just as the exposition was drawing to a close that autumn. The room the firm had created in France and shipped to New York contained objects that were made by craftsmen whose names today are among the art deco firmament: Edgar Brandt, Rene Lalique, Jean Luce, Emile Galle, and Maurice Dubocq. Not surprisingly, the innovative interior garnered wide acclaim in many reviews.

The radically new art deco look did not meet with universal approval on this side of the Atlantic, and Pozier smartly lobbied for this new style in two leaflets he wrote for his sales staff and potential customers. In one of these he stated that Schumacher was presenting a more "conservative modernism." At the same time, Pozier refrained from putting all of his eggs into one basket, for not all of the fabrics released during the art deco craze were avant-garde. The firm continued to manufacture chintzes, toiles, and other more traditional fabrics, many of which were based on historical documents.

During this period Pozier and his colleagues were also forming a collection of antique textiles for the company. Examples they purchased were used as sources of inspiration for the designers of the firm's future offerings. At the time, Paris was a wonderful place to purchase antique textiles, and at Schumacher, like other fabric houses, these collections grew like topsy. Since they were stored in a haphazard way, examples often lacked any written information that could shed light on their origins or dates. Fortunately, in the mid-1980s Schumacher made the commitment to organize and catalogue their holdings and to engage an archivist to oversee and care for these rare pieces. Thanks to the efforts of Richard E. Slavin, the company's archivist, Schumacher's collection, now numbering more than ten thousand examples, is organized and stored under the appropriate conditions. The archives not only contain historical documents collected over the course of the twentieth century, but also samples of the textiles the firm has manufactured or sold over its 114-year history.

This month Schumacher is releasing a new line named the Grand Statements Collection. It consists of a number of fabrics reproduced or adapted by Schumacher starting in the early 1900s--as the colonial revival was in full swing and the country place era was emerging. These were just the sons of fabrics that were well suited to those with conservative taste who would have shunned the sleek art deco fabrics that were being woven from new materials, including synthetics. Among the new offerings are nineteenth-century style French miles, floral chintzes based on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cottons that were updated for a more contemporary look in the 1930s, and chinoiserie scenes that have remained popular since Europeans first imported Chinese textiles and wallpapers in the seventeenth century. The collection forms a wonderful counterpart to what has generally been considered cutting-edge design in the first half of the twentieth century, when Schumacher ably straddled both sides of the fence that separated the modern from the traditional.

Schumacher has showrooms throughout the United States, open to the made only, For information about their fabrics, contact 800-523-1200 or visit their Web site (www.fschumacher.com).