Connecting Two Talents - Elizabeth Ashdown & Marisa Gutmacher

From TTE 15: Passementerie Redux/Hospitality, Winter 2022

Some stories come full circle in the most rewarding ways. When Samuel & Sons VP of Design Marisa Gutmacher called to tell me she had discovered artist Elizabeth Ashdown through The Textile Eye, I was over the moon. Marisa first saw Elizabeth’s handcrafted passementerie on the cover of our Winter 2022 report, and that moment of inspiration eventually led to their collaboration on the newly released Kaleidoscope collection.

Attending a dinner in Paris to celebrate the launch and finally meeting Elizabeth in person felt like a perfect culmination of that connection. Elizabeth describes Kaleidoscope as an “expression of the joy of embellishment,” and you can feel that in every vivid color and intricate detail. Knowing that The Textile Eye played a small role in connecting the dots makes it all the more special.

Before this collection was even on the horizon, I had the pleasure of speaking separately with both Marisa and Elizabeth for our Winter 2022 report. Their individual interviews explore their deep knowledge of passementerie, their creative processes, and their perspectives on craft in a contemporary context. Looking back now, it’s fascinating to see how their worlds were already orbiting each other before officially coming together.

I’m excited to share these conversations again—both as a look into their incredible expertise and as a reminder of how inspiration moves through the design world in unexpected ways.

Our Exclusive Interview with Elizabeth Ashdown, as Featured in TTE 15

“For the craft of passementerie to thrive today, the skills, forms, aesthetics, and contexts must be made contemporary and exciting in order to appeal to a modern sensibility.”

Elizabeth Ashdown

As a contemporary artist, Elizabeth Ashdown aims to preserve the endangered craft of passementerie. Innovating through context, application, and aesthetics, her bespoke creations respect the heritage art form with a thoroughly modern sensibility.

When did you first fall in love with trimmings?

I was introduced to trim weaving whilst studying Textile Design at Central Saint Martins. I worked on a very simple trim project—it was more about plain ribbon weaving than fancy passementerie. I undertook a lot of research into trimmings and became hooked on weaving them! Gradually, I taught myself how to weave passementerie, mainly from studying antique trim examples. After graduation I worked as a freelance trim designer, creating bespoke lengths for interior designers.

I came to realize that the skills and techniques had such potential to be used as artworks. I went back to school to study for an MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art with the purpose of incorporating traditional handweaving passementerie techniques to create contemporary artworks.

My work primarily focuses on the handweaving of passementerie using centuries old techniques such as cord spinning, fringe-making, and hand-dyeing. I have just been awarded an Endangered Craft grant by the Heritage Crafts Association, enabling me to study under a master passementerie maker with the sole purpose of learning new skills in respect to off-loom techniques, such as rosette and tassel making.

Tell me about your design and development process.

I keep sketchbooks that are filled with color, material, pattern, and texture research. Quite often, I work on a theme and spend quite a bit of time drawing and painting to create more personal inspiration to work from. A lot of my work is developed on my loom through play and exploration of materials, color, and pattern.

How and when do you introduce new works and where do clients find you?

All of my work is bespoke and is made in response to a client’s individual requirements.

I take part in exhibitions regularly, such as London Craft Week. I also use Instagram—it’s such a fantastic way to not only get inspired and meet new people, but also to showcase a holistic viewpoint to potential clients.

What inspires you?

Visiting museums and galleries! I visit exhibitions all the time, particularly textile art exhibitions. I’ve just come back from New York and saw a fantastic exhibition currently on show at the Bard Graduate Center about lace from the 1500’s to the current day.

What are you researching right now?

Patchwork quilts! I am obsessed with them! I have started doing research into quilts—especially those from Gee’s Bend—and I will be making a body of passementerie artworks inspired by them. I’ve had to shelve this research for now as I am writing a book about passementerie.

Is there anything about your creative process that would surprise people?

People are often very surprised by how mathematical and labor-intensive weaving is! Crafting passementerie requires a very methodical and organized approach, and you have to go through a number of processes, such as warp winding, dyeing, and threading the loom before you can actually weave anything!

What was the biggest challenge you have faced since starting your collection?

Covid-19 posed a big challenge as every project and exhibition I had booked was canceled. However, the pandemic also presented an opportunity. I developed an online course teaching people how to weave their own passementerie designs using very simple equipment. I have continued to teach online, as well as teaching special in-person passementerie masterclasses at my studio in London. Last weekend I taught a group of learners from Houston, Texas!

I love teaching—there is such enthusiasm, and it’s so exciting to be keeping the craft alive by teaching people, from all walks of life, how to create passementerie.

What is The Experimental Weave Lab?

I co-founded The Experimental Weave Lab in January 2021: London’s first contemporary, innovative weaving season. This six-month season supports a program of short- and long-term weaving residencies, talks, and workshops culminating in a final exhibition. The season aims to explore the experimental, interstitial spaces that weavers work within throughout UK craft, research, art, design, and industry.

The Experimental Weave Lab curated a special program of events for London Craft Week 2022 celebrating passementerie and supports 11 invited artists and designers to create innovative, exploratory, and contemporary woven work. All the artists are united in their desire to take risks with their work in order to push the boundaries of their craft.

How are you bringing passementerie into the 21st century?

In 2019 the Heritage Crafts Association labeled passementerie an “endangered” craft—meaning that there are serious concerns about the viability of the craft in its current form as an interior trimming. I believe innovation is key, and the craft needs new life, new energy, and new contexts.

Passementerie is rooted in tradition, and I feel it’s my role as a contemporary artist to not only respect this heritage British craft, but also to develop it in new ways to unleash its potential. My approach combines the traditional hand-making techniques of passementerie with a contemporary sensibility to create striking, bold, and highly tactile handwoven artworks.

My work is not about historical re-creation, nor is it about heritage preservation for the sake of posterity.

Our Exclusive Interview with Marisa Gutmacher, VP of Design at Samuel & Sons

“Inspiration is everywhere, and, as a designer, I think it’s about looking closely and seeing the world through different lenses.”

Marisa Gutmacher

THE ART OF DETAIL

Under the artful guidance of Marisa Gutmacher, Samuel & Sons evolves continuously to create a singularly unique, expansive collection of passementerie for the modern day. Blending historical inspiration with novel construction, each ornamental offering comes to life with a fresh, sophisticated color palette and cutting-edge design.

Tell us a core textile memory.

Early in my career, I had the opportunity to spend time at mills in France, learning how to warp the looms, mix yarn colors, and monitor production. In some villages, the mills have looms or artisanal handwork set up in their homes. I’ll never forget the moving, sensorial experience of walking down the narrow, cobblestone streets in these hilltop villages, peering through the double-story windows of these field-stone homes, in which festoons for braids flow from the rhythmic shuttles moving back and forth across the warps of ornate, hand-carved wooden looms.

How did you get into trimmings?

With a background in Interior Architecture, I joined the Trimming division at Robert Allen Fabrics where I spent time at various mills learning about the intriguing design language of passementerie and its rich history, while also studying archives and various construction techniques. I became quite passionate about this rare form of ornamentation in the process. In 1999, I joined a small high-end trimmings mill in France and was honored to develop collections with luxury textile studios, such as Schumacher, Brunschwig & Fils, Cowtan & Tout, Scalamandre, Lee Jofa, and Samuel & Sons. After working on developing collections for Samuel & Sons from the mill side, I joined the company in 2010 as the design director and have built our repertoire over the past 12 years to where we are today. By the time I joined Samuel & Sons, new weavers in different countries were rapidly emerging, creating new opportunities to explore different aesthetics and materials within passementerie.

Describe your work and aesthetic.

Samuel & Sons is renowned for its innovative trimmings and brings a visionary approach to the world of interiors. As vice president of design, I’ve created its refined, fully articulated color palettes and novel constructions to represent a sophisticated aesthetic. Studio collections are diligently developed from current trends, classic textile documents, or even from a starting point of a hand-rendered drawing or painting incorporating novel fibers or materials. This transformative vision is realized by intricate changes in coloration, methods of construction, scale, and fibers that culminate in groundbreaking trimmings with contemporary contexts. In collaboration with the leadership team, I’ve been responsible for the collections’ vision, development, and evolution since 2010. We have an extensive, diverse range of thousands of trimmings encompassing historical, cultural, and stylistic influences. We constantly explore, evolve, and redefine passementerie today.

How do you launch new introductions?

Samuel & Sons introduces new collections in January, showrooms here and abroad. We also exhibit at Decorex, Paris Deco Off, and BDNY.

What inspires you?

Inspiration is everywhere, and, as a designer, I think it’s about looking closely and seeing the world through different lenses. I’m inspired by historical textile and antique trimming documents as well classical architecture. I take clues from nature or different material investigations. Inspiration also often comes directly from current lifestyle trends in home furnishings or apparel detailing.

Where do you get color inspiration or direction?

Color inspiration comes from a variety of sources. We develop collections of patterns based on different narratives, and the sensibility around color in these instances helps communicate that story. In other scenarios, such as our Essentials collections of basics, in which we are incorporating extensive color lines, I take a global approach in synthesizing high end textile collections and trends from across the market. I consider decisions around color on a macro and micro scale, thinking about the entire Samuel & Sons anthology as well as creating a balance and versatile color story within each individual collection.

What might surprise people about your process?

I imagine most people would be surprised by the meticulous detail involved in coloring a complex pattern. For instance, in traditional multicolor tassel fringes, there might be up to eight different colors used in a particular location, and there might be 10 to 15 locations in one pattern. Multiply that by nine to 12 color families in a collection and six to seven patterns per color family, and suddenly there are hundreds of positions to specify in any given collection. Achieving the ideal balance when mixing yarn colors together is one of the greatest challenges in creating new collections of complex trimmings and one of the most critical in achieving visual harmony.

Tell us more about those technical design decisions.

Beyond its beauty and purpose as ornamentation, trimmings must achieve certain levels of functionality. Considerations of fiber, weave structure, scale, strength, flexibility, and end use all must be taken into account. Different fibers with different diameters act differently in different constructions. While a tassel fringe can hang beautifully when applied to a valance horizontally, it may not waterfall with the same grace when applied vertically down the leading edge of a drapery. That could be due to the fiber content, construction, or length of the tassel hangers. We undergo a lot of trialing, testing, and re-engineering of our trimmings before bringing them to market.

We use construction techniques such as striés, ombré, color-blocking and subtle tonal shifts to achieve greater depth and nuances within the color language of our products. Mélange—or mixing various hues, cast and saturation levels of colors in certain positions (woven or unwoven) within a pattern—enables trimmings to have more versatility in fabric pairings and applications. Passementerie differs from other woven or printed textiles in that you have areas where yarns hang loosely, such as in a tassel skirt or brush fringe, while in other areas of the same pattern are woven. Certain mixtures of color work well unwoven, but not when woven—so meticulous attention is often needed to achieve an ideal balance.

S&S recently opened a Paris showroom. Did you alter the offering for the French market?

Though based in the United States, Samuel & Sons is an international company and as such our collection of over 10,000 SKUs is available worldwide. Thus in the development of new collections, including our Essentials (basics), I’m synthesizing information from all of the different markets. Our French and UK teams provide insights on their markets, trends in color and aesthetic. We have representation throughout North America, Canada, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Russia.

What is the biggest challenge you face?

One of the most challenging aspects has been navigating production and supply chain issues from raw materials to production timelines and intermittent global issues. Since its inception, passementerie has always involved a great deal of handwork which introduces a whole other variable to the manufacturing planning and process. We work in close partnership with all our mills to plan, but some factors are beyond our control and require different kinds of creative solutions to bring our product to market on time.

How are you bringing trim into the 21st century?

From an aesthetic perspective, we always think about how the definition of home is changing and the stylistic implications of evolving lifestyle trends. In terms of digital technology, we are constantly making advances to improve our clients’ experience: from our comprehensive website to virtual sample books and digital lookbooks, to the recent launch of our app—which we like to refer to as “passementerie in your palm.” The Samuel & Sons app allows clients to search, browse, sample, and order from over 10,000 SKUs as well use the interactive feature to scheme with actual fabrics hands-on in real time.