Page 242 - Homes & Interiors Scotland

“The cra wasn’t well developed in Ireland, but
rather than outsourcing the work, Gerd trained

some of the local villagers to hand-weave”

© Tara Fisher

and she longed to get back to the creativities of design. Gerd
spent time in Asia with her husband and children but she
wasn’t comfortable playing the role of the expat wife. “She
wasn’t one to play tennis and drink gin and tonic,” explains
Mario. Instead, she was enterprising; she learned indigenous
weaving techniques on local looms – at one stage she was
even commissioned by a maharajah to design a series of rugs
for his summer palace. “This place was huge,” says Mario,
“bigger than Buckingham Palace!”
By the early 1950s, Gerd had moved her family to
Ireland to set up a workshop and studio. She found that
the craft wasn’t very well deve loped there, but rather than
outsourcing the work, she formed a local workforce and
trained some villagers to hand-weave.
The Milan Triennale in 1951 was an important showcase
for her – one of her rugs was used in a room set for Robin
Day. The same summer’s Festival of Britain ushered in
a new era of British design, and Gerd, with her London
connections, was working with classic furniture brand Hille
and for the Days, and later Terence Conran. Throughout the
1950s and early 1960s, the studio created predominantly
upholstery fabrics, introducing tweeds designed for fashion © Tara Fisher
designer Sybil Connolly’s spring and winter collections.

HOMES & INTERIORS SCOTLAND