Drapey is our best seller in 100% linen that we’re now reprinting with a new set of colours to perfectly complete this season’s three ranges of inspiration. A must-have for drapes, bed linens and accessories, especially ideal for removable covers.
The woven sculptures of Ruth Asawa
The versatility of the Drapey collection reminds us of the sculptures by Ruth Asawa (1926 – 2013) made from fabric. And it is incredible how the fabric can take such varied forms. From her organic and subtle sculptures she managed to create a unique stamp. Her personal story, moreover, is a great story of overcoming where art played a key role.
Ruth Asawa was a Japanese-American sculptor, educator and activist, committed from the beginning to art and education. She devoted much of her life to creating and nurturing a close relationship between professional artists and San Francisco elementary schools.
Her parents, Japanese immigrants, were farmers and experienced the tragic consequences of the World War and the US-Japan conflict. In 42 her father was arrested and she, at just 16 years old, along with her mother and siblings, were transferred to a labor camp where they spent about two years. Asawa, despite the difficult situation in which she found herself, began to paint and draw and attended art classes taught by Japanese workers at Disney Studios.
“I would not be who I am if it had not been for the internment, and I like who I am.”
Ruth Asawa
In 1946 she was admitted to Black Mountain College, an American art school where she had Merce Cunningham, Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller as teachers. A year later, on a trip to Toluca, Mexico, together with the architect and furniture designer Clara Porset, she discovered the basketry technique used by local artisans, which will inspire her to develop that particular technique in her sculptures.
In 1982 she founded SOTA, a children’s art school in downtown San Francisco now named after Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.
‘A child can learn something about color, about design, or about observing objects in nature. If you do that, you grow into a much greater sensitivity to the things around you. Art will make you better people, it will make them more skillful at thinking and improving whatever situation you face or whatever profession you dedicate to. Art makes people more complete.‘
Ruth Asawa
