Marion Dorn (1896 - 1964) American Textile Designer

Cyprus furnishing fabric by Marion Dorn V&A

American textile designer Marion Dorn (1896–1964) is best known for creating wall hangings, carpeting, and rugs, but she is also known to have created wallpaper, graphics, and illustrations. She made significant contributions to modern British interior design, especially with her “sculpted” carpets, and she worked on some of the most well-known interiors of the day, including those at the Savoy Hotel, Claridges, the Orion, and the Queen Mary. She produced moquette fabric designs for use in London Transport passenger vehicles in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Early Life

She attended Stanford University from 1912 to 1916, where she received a bachelor of arts in graphic arts. She relocated to San Francisco, where she and her former art teacher, Henry Varnum Poor, shared a studio in Russian Hill. From July 1919 to October 1923, they were married. 1919 saw the relocation of Poor and Dorn to New York City, where Dorn rose to prominence as a batik designer. She first met the poster artist, Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954), in Paris in 1923, and from late 1923 to July 1940, they lived together in London. After getting married in 1950, they remained in New York until his passing in 1954.

Biography

Dorn’s career took off in the early 1920s after she relocated to London; at the time, she was printing on silk, linen, and velvet in addition to making batik textiles. In May 1925, Vogue magazine featured five of her batiks, giving her exposure and showcasing her creativity.

By 1925, many London speciality shops carried her textiles, and because her creations were regarded as “modern textiles,” they were also displayed in London galleries and museums.

She established Marion Dorn LTD. in 1934 and began receiving commissions from significant clients, including the opulent hotels The Berkeley of London and The London Savoy.

In 1936, the London Passenger Transport Board hired Dorn to create moquette fabrics for use in automobiles. Four designs resulted as a result of this: “Chesham” in 1936; “Colindale” and “Canonbury” in 1937; and “Caledonian” in 1942. Up until the 1960s, the designs were still in use on the London Underground.

For her contribution to textile design, she was awarded an honorary fellowship by the British Society of Industrial Artists in 1957.

Influence in America

In contrast to the European market, which embraced avant-garde trends in art, Dorn toned down her modernist flair for the more conservative American market, but there were opportunities to explore other spheres of influence. The Good Neighbor policy, a foreign policy aimed at fostering good relations between the United States and Latin America, oversaw a deliberate pivot to the art, design, and culture of Latin America during the war, when Americans were essentially cut off from European fashion and design.

She retired to Tangier, Morocco, in 1962, where she died on January 28, 1964.

Exhibitions

From 1927 to 1939 Dorn’s work was exhibited in many influential European exhibitions as well as exports and exhibitions in the United States including the following:

Arthur Tooth Gallery, London (1929),[6] Exhibition of Rugs by Marion Dorn and Edward McKnight Kauffer
Dorland Hall, London (1933 and 1934),
Burlington House, London (1935),[1][6] Exhibition of British Art in Industry
The Universal Exhibition (World’s Fair), Paris (1937)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1937),Rugs and Carpets: An International Exhibition
Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE), San Francisco (1939), maintained exposure in the United States for her work in her absence.

Sample of Works

Sources/Reading List

Anscombe, I. (1985). A woman’s touch: Women in design from 1860 to the present day. Penguin Books. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://archive.org/details/womanstouchwomen0000ansc/page/146/mode/2up?q=%22marion+Dorn%22.

Bury, H. (1981). A choice of design: 1850-1980 ; fabrics by Warner and Sons Limited. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/choiceofdesign180000bury/page/58/mode/2up?q=%22marion+Dorn%22.

Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing. https://amzn.to/3ElmSlL

Day, S., & Mikaeloff, Y. (2015). Carpets of the art deco era. Thames et Hudson. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://amzn.to/3dSjM0u.

Marion Dorn, Back in the USA | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum#. (2022, March 18). Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2022/03/17/marion-dorn-back-in-the-usa/

Marion Dorn – Wikipedia. (2014, October 21). Marion Dorn – Wikipedia. Retrieved September 29, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Dorn

Textile Books – Amazon

* This website may contain affiliate links and I may earn a small commission when you click on links at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon and Sovrn affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

More Textile Designers

Alastair J.F. Morton (1910 – 1963) 🇬🇧 British textile manufacturer and 🎨 painter

Morton joined his family’s Morton Sundour Fabrics in 1931 and oversaw the company’s first screen-printed fabrics. He was the artistic director and principal designer of Edinburgh Weavers in Carlisle, which was established in 1928 as Morton Sundour’s creative design unit from 1932 to 1935. From the 1930s, he was a supporter of the Modern movement,…
Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) Czech textile designer

Jacqueline Groag (1903 – 1986) was a Czech textile designer and ceramicist. Born in Prague she studied in Vienna at the Kunstgewerbeschule during the 1920s. In 1937 she moved to Paris where she designed dress prints for Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiparelli and others.Read More →
Lucienne Day (1917 – 2010), influential 🇬🇧 textile designer

Lucienne Day was one of the most influential post-war British textile designers. She developed a unique style of pattern making. READ MORERead More →
Laura Ashley (1926 – 1988) British fabric and fashion designer

Laura Ashley was one of the first British designers to experiment with the concept of lifestyle marketing. Her romantic vision of nineteenth-century rural life, adapted to modern domestic realities, inspired a generation of middle-class Britons who returned to country life in the 1960s and 1970s. LEARN MORERead More →
Minnie Macleish (1876 – 1957 ) British textile designer

She collaborated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Constance Irving at London’s Foxton textiles and Amsterdam’s Metz store. Macleish was a prolific designer during the 1920s and 1930s, creating patterns for Morton Sundour fabrics.Read More →
Margaret Leischner (1908 – 1970) German textile designer

She began teaching weaving at the Bauhaus in 1931. She worked at the Dresdener Deutsche Werkstatten in 1931, designing woven textiles, and was the head of the weaving department at the Berlin Modeschule from 1932 to 1936. She worked as the head designer for Gateshead, a British fabric manufacturer.Read More →
Masakazu Kobayashi (b.1944) Japanese textile designer

Masakazu Kobayashi studied at the University of Arts, Kyoto, Japan. He manifested traditional textile techniques and aesthetics in his work. Between 1966 and 1975, he worked as a textile designer for Kawashima. His 1982 fabric evoked komon, a textile dyeing technique which uses paper patterns with small motifs.Read More →
Maya Romanoff (1941 – 2014), American textile designer

Maya Romanoff (1941- 2014) was an American Textile Designer. He studied at the University ofRead More →
Marjatta Metsovaara (1927 – 2014) Finnish Textile Designer

Metsovaara’s style ranged from designs made up of organic forms in vibrant hues to muted neutral tones. She designed for 10 mills in Finland and abroad by 1967, and she made both printed and woven textiles. She ran her design studio and weaving mill in Urjala, Finland.Read More →
Benno Premsela (1920 – 1997) Dutch textile and exhibition designer

Benno Premsela (1920 – 1997) was a Dutch textile and exhibition designer. He studied interior design at the Nieuwe Kunstschool, Amsterdam. Read More →
Shirley Craven (b.1934) British Textile Designer

Shirley Craven (b.1934) was a British textile designer. She studied at Kingston upon Hull and the Royal College of Art, London. Craven ‘pioneered an aesthetic more akin to painting than textiles’, breaking ‘all the rules’.Read More →
Junichi Arai (1932 – 2017) Japanese textile designer and producer

Junichi Arai (1932 – 2017) was a Japanese textile designer and producer born in Kiryu, Gunma. As the sixth generation of a mill-owning family, Arai grew up with fabrics being woven for obis and kimonos. He held traditional weaving methods in high regard and the skills that only the human hand can have in the…
Helen Abson (b.1942) Australian Architect and Fabric Designer

Helen Abson, who trained as an architect, is an Australian designer. She pursued architecture for five years; founded ZAB Design where she designed fabrics that exhibited a preoccupation for texture achieved through pattern and colour.Read More →
Hiroshi Awatsuji (1929 – 1995) Japanese Textile Designer

Hiroshi Awatsuji (1929- 1995) was a Japanese textile and graphic designer: born in Kyoto. He was considered the first Japanese textile designer to be recognised for contemporary design rather than for traditional art and craft. The main characteristic of his work was over sized motifs.Read More →
Gerhard Munthe (1855-1929) Norwegian textile, furniture, Interior Designer

Between 1877-82, he lived in Munich. As a pictorial artist, he brought about the break with historicism in Norway. Drawing on Norwegian folk art and poetry, he illustrated books and designed tapestries for firms including DNB (Det Norske Billedvaveri).Read More →
Tammis Keefe (1913 – 1960) American Textile Designer

Tammis Keefe (1913–1960) was an American textile designer. She designed everything from dish towels to glassware in her airy Dorothy Leibis Studio. Her work can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt and the Fashion Institute of Technology.Read More →
Paul Poiret (1879 – 1944) – King of Fashion

In the early decades of the 20th century, Paul Poiret was a crucial figure in the French fashion industry, notably by adding a deep oriental flavour and rich colours to contemporary clothing. Read More →
Marianne Straub Swiss weaver and designer

Marianne Straub began weaving as a child and later trained under Heinrich Otto Hürlimann Between 1928-31, at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zürich. Between 1932-33, she was involved with machine production, at Bradford Technical College.Read More →
Gertrud Preiswerk 🇨🇭 Swiss textile designer

Gertrud Preiswerk was a Swiss textile designer she was born in Basel. Between 1926 andRead More →
Oskar Petrovich Gryun (1874 – 1931) Russian 🇷🇺Textile Designer

Oskar Petrovich Gryun (1874 – 1931) was a Russian Textile Designer. Education He studied atRead More →
Jack Lenor Larsen (1927 – 1920) American Textile Designer

He opened his workshop in New York in 1952 and received his first commission, from the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, for draperies for 1952 Lever House, New York. At this time, he began machine-weaving fabrics that had the appearance of handweaving; they were subsequently much imitated. Read More →
Peter McCulloch (b.1933) British textile designer

In the early 1960s, he taught at the Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall. Some of his textiles incorporated contrasting colors in small dots suggesting printed circuitry, as in his 1963 Cruachan fabric produced by Hull Traders.Read More →
Angelo Testa (1921 – 1984) American fabric designer

Angelo Testa (1921 – 1984) was an American fabric designer. He studied at the Institute of Design, Chicago, to 1945. As well as being a fabric designer, he was a painter and sculptor. He designed the 1941 Little Man abstract floral fabric, widely published and hailed as a new direction in textile design. It all…
Allan Walton (1891 – 1948) British painter, decorator, architect and textile designer

He commissioned some of the most innovative screen prints of the 1930s, designed by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, as a principle of Allan Walton Fabrics. Read More →
Marie Teinitzer (1879 – 1960) Czech textile artist and producer

Marie Teinitzerová was born in a little town near Pelhimov called kov. However, she and her parents soon relocated to Jindichv Hradec. In Vienna and Brno, she studied painting. She attended the School of Applied Arts in Prague from 1905 to 1906, then a weaving school in Berlin in 1906. Her research tour took her…
Frantíšek Kysela (1881 – 1941) Czech designer and teacher

Frantíšek Kysela (1881 – 1941) was a Czech designer and teacher. He was born in Kourim. Between 1900-04 and 1905-08, he studied at the School of Decorative Arts Prague, under K. Mašek. Read More →
Theo Moorman (1907 – 1990) British Weaver and Designer

Theo Moorman was a devoted artist with a lifetime of experience. She created her technique over a wide range of designs and textural combinations, exploring its potential. A new invention was every piece of work, and they were always full of vitality.Read More →
Ray Komai (1918 – 2010 ) American Graphic, Industrial and Interior Designer

Ray Komai was a Japanese American; he was a graphic, industrial and interior designer. He studied in Los Angeles at the Art Center College. He settled in New York in 1944, where he worked in advertising and set up a graphic design and advertising office (with Carter Winter). J.G. Furniture created Komai’s 1949 moulded plywood…
Candace Wheeler (1827 – 1923) American textile and wallpaper designer

THE MOTHER OF INTERIOR DESIGN She is noted for helping to open the field of interior design to women, supporting craftswomen, and for encouraging a new style of American design.Read More →
Alexander Girard (1907 – 1993) American interior, & Textile designer

Alexander Girard (1907 – 1993) was a man of many design talents. He trained asRead More →
Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx (1902 – 1998) British textile and graphic designer

Designs for London Underground seats. She studied painting and wood engraving at the Royal College of Art in London, as well as at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.Read More →
Eileen Ellis (b.1933) British textile designer

Between 1952 and 1954, Ellis was a textile department student at Central School of Arts & Crafts, specialising in weaving (she took a National Diploma in the subject).Read More →
Ross Franklin Littell (1924 – 2000) American textile and furniture designer

Ross Franklin Littell (1924 – 2000) was an American textile and furniture designer known forRead More →
Sven Markelius (1889 – 1972) – Swedish Architect, Textile Designer

Sven Markeilus (1889- 1972) was a Swedish Architect, Town Planner and textile designer born in Stockholm. He taught in Stockholm and at Yale University. In the 1950s, Markelius designed simple wooden furniture and printed fabrics with Astrid Sampe, produced by Nordiska in Stockholm.Read More →
Margaret Simeon (1910 – 1999) British Textile Designer

She worked as a freelance designer of garment and furnishings textiles. Allan Walton Textiles, Edinburgh Weavers, Campbell Fabrics, and Fortnum and Mason were among her clientele. She taught textile printing at the Royal College of Art.Read More →
Thomas Lamb – Industrial Designer – “The Handle Man”

Thomas Lamb founded his textile design studio at seventeen, specialising in advertising, fashion, and magazine illustration. In the 1920s, his bedspreads, napkins, and draperies were immensely popular. Many New York department stores carried them, including Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue.Read More →
Gere Kavanaugh American textile, industrial & interior designer

Kavanaugh worked for General Motors as a stylist, primarily designing exhibitions to demonstrate autos and creating displays, model kitchens, and interiors. She was one of the company’s first female designers, called the “Damsels of Design” by design director Harley Earl. Read More →
Primerose Bordier (1929 – 1995) French textile designer

Primrose Bordier (1929 – 1995) was a French designer known for her colourful and innovative home textiles. She studied at the Atelier Charpentier in Paris.Read More →
Boris Kroll (1913 – 1991) American Textile Designer

In 1938, he founded Cromwell Designs, which began by weaving Modern furniture fabrics on a handloom with a bathtub for dying yarns. He began employing power looms in 1939. Boris Kroll Fabrics, New York, was founded by him in 1946. Cotton and novelty spun rayon was used.Read More →
Anni Albers (1899 – 1994) German Textile Designer, artist and teacher

Anni Albers was a German Textile Designer, artist and teacher. She was born in Berlin and was the Wife of Josef Albers.Read More →
Elizabeth Peacock (1880 – 1969) British textile designer

She was best known for the eight banners commissioned by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst for the Great Hall in Dartington between 1934 and 1938. She was a spinner, dyer, and weaver and an outstanding teacher from 1940 until 1957.Read More →
Annie Coop – Australian Textile Studio

Index: abc | def | ghi | jkl | mno | pqr | stu |Read More →
Friedl Dicker (1899 – 1944) Austrian architect & interior designer

Friedl Dicker (1899 – 1944) was an Austrian architect and furniture, interior, and textile designer. She was active with Franz Singer in their Werkstätten bildender Kunst, Berlin, and amalgamated her studio with Singer’s, Vienna, designing houses, apartments, kindergartens, offices, textiles, interiors, and furniture. She was arrested during the Starhemberg Putsch in Vienna, practised interior architecture…
Robert Yorke Goodden (1909-2002) British architect and designer

He was in private practice since 1932. Wallpapers, domestic machine-pressed glassware for Chance Bros., 1953 coronation hangings for Westminster Abbey, gold and silverwares, ceremonial metalwork, glassware for King’s College, Cambridge, 1961 metal-foil murals for the oceanliner Canberra, engraved and sandblasted glass murals for Pilkington. Read More →
Hannah Ryggen (1894 – 1970) Swedish textile designer

Hannah Ryggen (1894 – 1970) was a textile designer and teacher from Sweden. She was born in Malmö and worked professionally in Norway.Read More →
Christine Van der Hurd – British textile designer

Christine Van der Hurd is a British textile designer and is professionally active in New York and London. She studied at the Winchester School of Art, Hampshire, until 1973Read More →
Illustrator Charlotte Edey creates soft yet bold dream-like worlds

Charlotte Edey is a British printing, textile and embroidery artist & illustrator. Her interdisciplinary discovery of the intersections of identity and the spiritual reveals the symbolism and myth within her work. Womxn’s experience of colour is centred in her commentary on the politics of space.Read More →
Barbro Nilsson (1899 – 1982) Swedish Textile Designer

Barbro Nilsson (1899 – 1982) was a Swedish Textile Designer. She was born in Malmö. Between 1913-17, she studied weaving, at Brunsson Vavskola, under Johanna Brunsson and Alma Jakobsson. Between 1917-20, at the Konstfackskolan and Tekniska Skolan, Stockholm. Read More →
Ronald Grierson British, textile, carpet and wallpaper designer

Ronald Grierson was a British designer of textiles, carpets, and wallpaper. He studied at theRead More →
French fabrics in the art deco style

Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann | “Sarrazin” Textile | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Ruhlmann used the sameRead More →
Karen Vibeke Klint – Danish Textile Designer

Karen Vibeke Klinti s a Danish weaver and textile designer, educated in 1949 from the Arts and Crafts School in Copenhagen . Vibeke Klint has been extremely active in the latter half of the twentieth century, both as a artisan, designer, teacher,.Read More →