Monday, January 27, 2025 – HER DESIGNS WERE TOO ABSTRACT FOR THE TIME

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THE TEXTILE 

DESIGNS OF

RUTH REEVES

Monday,  January 27, 2025

ISSUE #1378

NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FROM THE STACKS

The holdings of the New-York Historical Society Library are vast and fascinating. It is always fun to open a box of photos or unroll a set of drawings to discover something new. Recently, a researcher was working with the Printmaker File (PR 58), a collection of aquatints, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts, representing work by over 200 artists dating from 1730 to the present. That’s how the delightful etchings of Albert E. Flanagan caught my eye.

Ruth Marie Reeves (1892–1966) was an American painter, Art Decotextile designer and expert on Indian handicrafts.

Artist/MakerRuth Reeves

Manhattan

1930
Place madeNew York, United States, North America
Silk shantung
Overall: 54 x 35 1/4 in. ( 137.2 x 89.5 cm )

Gift of Bella C. Landauer
1945.82
Designed by Ruth Reeves (1892-1966), the textile “Manhattan” was part of a series commissioned by the W. & J. Sloane Company in 1930. The series was exhibited later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, “Decorative Metal Work and Cotton Textiles.” Reeves’s designs ranged from the abstract to more realistic scenes of contemporary life and reflected her interest in the urban landscape of soaring skyscrapers, expansion bridges, and sophisticated citizens.
Description
MarkingsPrinted along selvage: “Manhattan designed by Ruth Reeves”
ClassificationsTEXTILES

Early life and education

Ruth Marie Reeves was born in Redlands, California, on July 14, 1892.^[2] She attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1910 to 1911, the San Francisco Art Institute from 1911 to 1913, and won an Art Students League‘s scholarship in 1913, where she studied until 1915.^[
In 1917 she married Leland Olds, a graduate of Amherst College. They divorced in 1922.
 

In 1920, Reeves traveled to Paris and studied with Fernand Léger.^[5] During her time in Paris, she pioneered the use of vat dyes and the screen print process for home fabrics.
 

Above
Drawing, preliminary sketch for “Westpoint” from the Hudson River series, 1933–1934 by Ruth Reeves

Ruth Reeves working on a mosaic mural. Photographed for the Works Progress Administration. Identification on verso (handwritten and stamped): Federal Art Project W.P.A.; Photographic Division; 110 King Street; New York City Location: 628 West 24 St.; Date: 6/10/40; Negative No.: 4794-1; Photographer: Shalat. Identification on accompanying label (typewritten): Ruth Reeves, right, and an assistant at work on a large mosaic mural in the Stained Glass Shop, a unit of the New York City WPA Art Project, located at 624 West 24th Street, New York City. Miss Reeves, well-known textile designer, mural painter and Guggenheim Fellowship winner for 1940, has adopted the familiar theme of school activities for the mural which is to be installed in the William Cullen Bryant High School.

Career

Returning to the United States in 1927, her designs were influenced by modern developments in France like Cubism.

 Reeves’s first exhibition was with the American Designers’ Gallery in New York, where she showed textiles.^[8] Lewis Mumford called her wall hangings and dresses inspired by traditional Guatemalan designs shown in 1935 “probably the most interesting work any designer has offered for commercial production today.
 

One of her best-known works was the carpeting and wall fabrics of Radio City Music Hall in New York City.^[10] Her fabric and carpet designs along with those of her colleague Marguerita Mergentime can be seen there today.
^] Donald Deskey, who won the competition to design the interiors for Radio City Music Hall, commissioned Reeves and Mergentime to design textiles for the hall.^[12]

The Index of American Design, one of three main divisions of the Federal Art Project (FAP) was originally conceived by Reeves and Romana Javitz, the curator of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library, as a way for the American artist to find authentic American everyday objects to use as visual references for their work. The Index was established with the FAP in January 1936 with Reeves as its national supervisor. She held the position until the spring when Adolph Cook Glassgold replaced her. Within the Index, Shaker works were highly prized as Reeves felt they emphasized the art of the American common man.^[10][13][14]

She later taught at the Cooper Union Art School in New York
^[
She married engineer Donald Robert Baker and had three daughters. The couple separated in 1940
 

After 1956, she moved to India as a Fulbright scholar, where she served on the All India Handicrafts Board. She died in New Delhi in 1966.
 

She often worked with narratives sourced from her life or friends live

South Mountain is one of her earliest narrative pieces designed as an autobiographical family portrait. It was named after the road she lived on in the artist colony in New City, New York. This piece was the start of her “personal prints” that were privately commissioned limited editions.

In 1930, Reeve was commissioned by the W. & J. Sloane Company to create a group of narrative textiles to be submitted to the American Federation of Art for their International Exhibition of Decorative Metalwork and Cotton Textiles that was to be held later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The company neglected to check in on her progress and in the end were horrified at the unconventional fabric she designed. Each pattern was printed on twenty-nine different types of cotton and depicted a series of rooms in an imaginary house. The fabrics also didn’t sell and the relationship ended unhappily. The most notable work from this collection is “American Scene,” a panorama that celebrates everyday American life: work, sports, and family.^[15][17][18]

In 1933, Reeves created a series of textiles inspired by the Hudson River School. These textiles were funded by a grant from the Gardner School Alumnae Fund. In 1934, the textiles were shown at the National Alliance of Art and Industry.^[6]

In 1934, she traveled to Guatemala through a sponsorship from the Carnegie Institution. The textiles she collected on this trip were exhibited at Radio City in New York. In 1935, she worked with R. H. Macy & Company to create five Guatemalan-inspired patterns that were some of her only works to be produced commercially.

Above DescriptionDesign for carpet for Radio City Music Hall. Repeating pattern of still life with musical instruments in tones of brown and beige. Repeat unit is rectangular; some feature instruments including the guitar, saxophone, and accordion, while others rendered with undulating abstract shapes; nine units shown.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

CREDITS

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
ENCYCLOPEDIA.DESIGN
WIKIPEDIA
FROM THE STACKS NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
JUDITH BERDY

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