Esther Fitzgerald Rare Textiles

May 2013

It has been a difficult year to find great objects and a difficult year for institutions to pay for objects that they wish to acquire as public funding has been reduced hugely. Our web presence however has really grown - this is mostly from people adding us to pinterest.

I was in the V and A bookshop the other day looking at the range and number of books now written on textiles, none of which existed thirty odd years ago when I started to become interested in textiles. It was a brilliant time to find wonderful things that few people knew anything at all about I was indeed in the right place at the right time.

Today we are number one on a world google search for "rare textiles". We will be adding a new section to the website over the next few weeks ,which will be rare objects, chosen on the same basis as the textiles. We are doing Olympia in June from 6th -16th and will be presenting a good group of newly acquired modernist piece's and some abstract Asian and African textiles along with a collection of African carved chairs.

I am happy to email anyone tickets for this or alternatively you can pick them up at the door.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Very Best Esther

May 2012

The Antique Textile World has shrunk considerably over the last few years but at last there seem to be signs of new shoots. From January this year things have begun to pick up.I have been widening my horizons by spending more time in the North of England in the past month, than at any other time of life. My first trip was to Maccelsfield Silk Museum. It was my first trip to a former silk mill and I left with a new respect for the Jacquard loom, it really was the forerunner of the computer. The conditions inside a silk mill were far more desirable than in a cotton mill where cotton seeds in the air made breathing difficult. One did feel that these mill towns had a real sense of community. My second trip was to Leeds to take a piece of Art to the Leeds art Gallery.Here I realized how London centric my views really were and it was interesting to realize how avant garde Leeds was in the modernist period. Even more recently some of our major British Artists - Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Damian Hurst come from Leeds or the surrounding area. While in Leeds I was encouraged to visit Saltaire. If Blake had been to Saltaire he might never have written Jerusalem. Now it is a world heritage site and well worth a visit. I have also been encouraged of late by the number of contemporary artists who are incorporating textiles in to their concepts. Currently two exhibitions at the Tate Modern: Boetti and Kusama are prime examples as well as Louise Bourgeois at the Freud in Hampstead.

I have also been looking for textiles and although far more difficult than in the past I have managed to find a wonderful early Nurata Susani, some modernist textiles and a few indigo and Ewe cloths . All these should be on the website shortly. From June 7th -17th we will be exhibiting at Olympia . Let me know if you would like invitations and we will email them to you.

With best wishes. Esther.

15/04/2012

We will be exhibiting at Olympia International Fine Art and Antiques Fair this year from the 7th -17 June. Link

19/09/2011

We have a new Video Page



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What is a price?

I think of myself as a professional in valuing textiles within a sphere of importance. I am a thorough researcher and where I have doubt I seek out the top academics .

Some 20 odd years ago I sold a rare textile for £10,000. I later discovered it had been sold on for £165,000.00. I considered what I might have got wrong in its assessment I concluded that everything was fine apart from my failure to imagine a price as large as was reached. I resolved to think bigger!

Institutions have public finances to defend and one has has to justify prices within a set market. When something is extremly rare there is very often a problem as there is nothing to compare it with. So one asks oneself the question: "could I find the object again?", if the answer is no, then the question is: "what is the price ?"

For some time the textile shown on the left has been on our website. We offered it to our major Islamic collectors but all turned it down because it was unfamiliar to them. It was offered on the website for a modest £4,000. After a while I sold it to a fellow dealer at cost . (no point in flogging a dead horse) It was then sold on, went to another dealer who put it into the Sotheby's Sale on April 6th 2011 as lot 349 and it sold for £33,650.

I am telling you this story really to recommend that you look at the site more often as we both could be missing out on making a fortune.

The other news is that we have completely overhauled the website removing all sold items to an archive, improved links, adding our favorite websites and hopefully made it more user friendly.

If you can see ways in which we can improve it even more do not hesitate to contact us.

Excerpts from the Marian Stoll letters are now up, I hope these will be taken advantage of, as they are a great research resource into the days of the polymath. In the meantime enjoy the spring and summer.

Very best, Esther,

April 2011

Yinka Shonibare Week-end, at The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

I was thrilled to be asked to contribute to a debate on the work and influence of Yinka Shonibare on 26th and 27th February. 2011. The NMM were exploring the history and inspiration behind Shonibare's Fourth Plinth commission Nelson's Ship in a Bottle currently on display in Trafalgar Square.

Shonibare uses what is popularly believed to be West African wax batik cloth to give his work an African authenticity. The irony being that the cloth was originally made in 1840’s, in Holland for the Indonesian market as machine made copies of the indigenous batik. Today West African wax cloth is still made in the U.K. and Holland but the majority is made in China.

Yinka discussed his work at the Saturday debate, mentioning that for his art to make an impact of thee seconds, he sometimes puts a year of research into it. Many Anglo- African members of the audience at NMM spoke of the healing quality that his work held for them. I will not describe his work, words are bad tools in describing art but I will direct you to his web site www.yinkashonibarembe.com

The Sunday debate was between Beatrice Behlan of the Museum of London, Amy Miller of the N.M.M., me and the audience. We discussed trade with Indonesia and Africa, and contemporary ideas of cultural identity.

We reviewed why the Indonesian market rejected the cloth and left the Dutch with ship loads of unsalable machine made batik. I speculated that in Indonesia, where, textiles were an intrinsic part of the culture and esteemed not just for clothing and identity but were very much part of a philosophical journey, cheap machine made substitutes was never going to be acceptable.

We considered why this same cloth was so readily accepted in West Africa, touching on the traditional hand woven textiles which existed before 1840 and the limited colour range available in them. Owning textiles in Africa was a sign of wealth. Few could afford more than one garment. We concluded that these colourful cottons were relatively inexpensive and in a world that had never seen polychrome printed cottons, the colour contrasts and endless patterns must have been pure delight, and left a lasting legacy in West Africa.

Esther Fitzgerald

March 2nd




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October 2010

Silver lining's
I seem to have spent the past summer researching a Ballet Russe Costume.The problem with the inter-net is you can drown in information. I have looked at almost every production of the golden period of Ballet Russe; the back drops, the costumes and the synopsis to search for clues to this particular costume.

I have taken it to the world's experts. I know what it is not, but the mystery continues.

What it is: view image
A costume made for a male dancer. Constructed in a typical manner for ballet. It is lined in warp faced cotton.The base cloth to outer dress, which is embellished with silver embroidery, is also warp faced cotton. A very interesting feature of the design to the body of the costume is the overlapping circles know as the genesis symbol. The arms are embellished with a cloud, wave or fire design in silver and orange. In the left inside shoulder is a mark Russe C.B. I am putting on our site hoping that some one will know immediately which production it was from.

Led by the flame design on the sleeve, I started my research with Firebird. However most of the records for Firebird were destroyed in a fire and having spent a day at The Theatre and Performance archive at Blyth Rd found very little to confirm any association with Firebird. I have now explored many other productions so far with no luck . So now I am hoping that some one out there will recognise it.

I also have added some ikats to the Islamic sections and some modernist pieces to that section.

Having extensive material now on Marian Stoll we will be adding it little by little to the research section. We recently acquired a new piece by her that was published in Studio Magazine in September 1927. It was previously owned by V.M. Allom a contemporary of W.H. Auden at Oxford. We are building a bank of information on this formidable woman. We have found letters she wrote to Ottoline Morrell in England and to Alec Walcott (a member of the Algonquin set) in the United States. She was an extremely interesting woman and a member of Avant-Garde.

Apologies again for being slow to update the site, but please feel free to contact us, many things don't make it to the site. We are also very happy to search things out for you.

Very best wishes,

Esther

November 16th 2009

Volume 2 of "Seed and Spirit of Modernism" is now out in the big wide world. We launched it at the Livingstone Studio, which was a great location for the launch and a party. We have added a few pictures to the website in "Past exhibitions". Volume 2 is also available from Franks 5 Winsley Street W1. We are also about to add a new section to website which will be "Indigo."

At the moment I am very keen to buy good early kashmir shawls and good Uzbek ikats. I have also been trying to research Paul Nash block printed textiles of the 20s. So I am keen to see anything any one may have on him. The Auction rooms are now very poor sources of new material so thank you for continuing to offer us new possibilities to buy. We are always happy to see anything you may have.

We have also added Rozanne Hawksley to our links, Rozanne is the first contemporary artist working with textiles that I have been really excited by. Her work is extraordinary! A book on her is available "Rozanne Hawksley" by Mary Schoeser published by Lund Humphries .isbn 978-1-848220026-3

The downturn in the economy has apparently resulted in a few unexpected delights. Apparently more of us are now involved in more creative pursuits and are keener to develop integrity and well being, rather than piles of money.

So I send many good wishes to you all in this new world, emerging from the dark ages of the 20th century.

May 2008

News Update
Despite the economic gloom that has been spreading for the last six months,we have been really busy ,so much so that the website has suffered from lack of attention. Horst my ever intrepid web man runs some very successful sites and has been overwhelmed in the last few months.

In the gap from communicating our " Seed and Spirit of Modernism Catalogue " has been a great success and is even being sold at the British Museum bookshop along with Blackwells ,Amazon and Waterstons which is very encouraging. An article in The Financial Times last October also gave us a boost.

In a few days I leave for a short trip to Boston and Rhode Island and on to New York for The Tribal Art and Textile Show. Nat Turner will be helping me once again and we will be showing a mixture of Modernist and Tribal pieces both for collectors and decorators illustrating my new direction in the seed and spirit of modernism.

Tickets for the show At The Gramercy Park Armory, Lexington Ave at 26th Street ,opening hrs 11am to 8pm, Thursday 15th and Friday 16th .Sat 17th from 11am to 7.pm Sunday 18th 11am-5pm. will as ever be at the door and collected under the name of Fitzgerald for anybody who would like to come along.

Please feel free to give us a nudge if you are looking for anything that is not up on the website ,we are acquiring textiles all the time, many of which do not make it to the website.

When we return from USA we will be starting a new catalogue which is entitled "Colour in Time and Space" an exploration through textiles and will be looking to acquire pieces that will fit this title.

Both Nat and I will look forward to seeing you in New York.

Seed and Spirit of Modernism - An exploration through textiles

Foreword

When I started this project I had a rather general view of early modernism; I knew what a Bauhaus chair looked like; who Joseph Hoffman was and what Ben Nicholson represented. I had read Virginia Woolf, struggled with Proust and knew the difference between Jung and Freud.

For years when we exhibited Pre Columbian, African and Asian textiles, the comment would be, ‘how surprisingly modern’. I thought I knew what they meant and glowed a little, for in the last twenty years it has been difficult to surprise without being sensational. I thought that the Shock of the Old was far more stimulating than the “Shock of the New”. My view of the commercially-made product was not high.

Between the wars, however, the involvement of artists and designers - committed to the improvement of their society after the devastation of war - was exciting, diverse and controversial. Socialisms and industrialisation were hand in hand. New liberties for women and a slow awareness of racial injustice were coming to the surface. The Victorians and Edwardians were more out of influence and favour than the Egyptians. The polymath was influential.

In the twenties Johannes Itten commenced his Bauhaus classes with breathing exercises; Florence Hodgkin’s family was at the heart of the organic movement; Nancy Nicholson was on the road giving advice on contraception; Ashley Havindon was one of the pioneers of the advertising agency; Josephine Baker was highlighting racial injustice. While Ottoline Morrel was giving away her family inheritance for the sake of art, Picasso was asking us to look at familiar forms for a new beauty. In 1928, Francis Bacon was designing furniture, carpets and interiors. This was a time when art and industry merged, whether from idealism or survival. These people were not only modern and alternative in their day but would also qualify as such in ours.

In Paul Nash’s essay “The Meaning of Modern” (1932) he quotes Clive Bell’s definition of Modern as ‘to find meaning’. I hope that in looking at the textiles that are presented here, one will be able to judge, in some way, whether or not these artists and craftsmen succeeded in expressing this definition within their time.

I hope, also, that you may enjoy a glimpse at this period as much as we did while researching it.

Esther Fitzgerald
Hampstead
November 2007

The new catalogue is available for £32 plus Postage and Packing. Email your order here Thanks.

News Update: May 1st 2007

We have added two extra sections to the website; press and textiles under £400 hopefully these are self explanatory.

San Francisco was thoroughly enjoyable ,since which I have had my head down doing research of one sort or another. At the moment I am particularly interested in an artist and embroiderer who worked in 20s and 30s in UK and in 40s in USA. Her name is Marion Stoll if anybody has any further information on her I would be very grateful to receive it.

We are in New York at the Tribal and Textile Show from 19-22nd May, with a group of new acquisitions including some Joseph Hoffman panels, some very interesting Turkish towels, some great energetic Ndop cloths and an extraordinary 1920’s embroidery which has kept me in libraries for at least the last month.

There will also be our usual mix of Japanese, Greek, Tibetan ,Indian ,African and Central Asian.

If you would like tickets for the show, as always they will be at the door under the name of Fitzgerald.

The dollar exchange has worried some of our American clients but in reality our expenses are less and very often the international currency in which we buy is dollars, so it may in-fact work out cheaper to buy from us in New York.

Nat Turner will be helping me in New York and we both look forward to seeing you there.

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