Grider Upholstery

Last night was a wonderful evening in benefit of . Thank you again to for inviting me to be the designer at the showroom! 🫶🏻

Textiles and Passementerie: Kelmescott Hand Block in Peacock on Sand, Rosette Woven in Disco, City Tweed in Rosebud, and Amarna Embellished Tape in Multi ( collection).

The tablescape pieces are ALL vintage from my personal collections including the 1950s silver tree is from Sears!

Floral arrangement was done with one of my dearest friends and all but the ranunculus and eucalyptus are plants native to Virginia.

Join us for a magical night! Marvel at extraordinary holiday tablescapes designed by DC Metro’s talented interior designers, indulge in the festive atmosphere, and raise a glass to the season. This joyful evening benefits Children’s National Hospital, with all proceeds donated to support their important work.

A wonderful day spent at the archives where the lovely shared with us an intimate journey of textiles through the ages (2000 BC Coptic piece through today) the team at was to delve into their new era after damage to the interior. These wonderful women taught me so much and was happy to have the shared experience of discovering the past.

Still typing up from all that I’ve learned yesterday with application of B72 for museum tagging and ascension numbers from Kathy, the Curator and Director of Historical Resources and Collections, from .
📸: Dr. Reed

You’re probably also asking what’s going on in the back?!
I brought a canopy bed into the studio to pin up the combination of textiles for the two bedsteads (one summer and one winter).

When doing research I like to find the origin of reproductions and the story behind it. This one, Menars Bordered Panel, has an exceptionally rich cosmopolitan story and ties to early America. From the Kravet archivists:
“One of our most ambitious projects was to reproduce by silk screen one of a set of rare 18th century French curtain panels. Each panel consists of a central patterned cotton with four different textiles (probably 18th century French) cut and appliqued to the edges to form an elaborate undulating foliate border. The pattern was hand-blocked and painted Indian (Coromandel Coast) cotton made for the European market while three of the border patterns were European block printed cottons imitating the style of the popular Indian cottons. A fourth pattern is also a hand-painted Indian cotton appliqued to create the intertwining border leaves. The appliqued areas were finished with blue and white decorative tape.”

The second image (it’s original) from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation described it as such:
“This costly curtain is part of a set that once hung in a lavish European house. The set probably included window curtains and hangings for a tall-post bed. Measuring almost fourteen feet in length, each curtain has a different white-ground Indian chintz at its center, bordered by dark-ground European block-printed textiles.”

Had a long meeting with the fabulous today to go over the current progress of research and furnishing plan for .
Much of the conversation aside from historical elements was about female representation through the textiles.

“Because of its gendered assignment (to women), coupled with the fact that cloth-making was such a functional skill, the idea of textiles as an art medium and art form didn’t take hold until recently, despite its millennia of history.”
-Textiles: The Art of Women’s Work
By Brenda Lin

A parallel history to the are the stories of . Today, I would like to share with you two iconic designers who made waves in design and we are still in the splash zone! Dorothy Draper started her design firm in 1929 and designed the Rhododendron pattern (above) and Sister Parish started her firm in 1933 and designed the Ollie pattern (below). Both of these patterns are taken from nature. Entrepreneurship and design must be in their genes because they are actually cousins! They each paved the way for women in design and much of what they had created we still see and study today from to the .

I love working with and the Custis Embroidered Tape from their collection with is phenomenal for the project!

An excerpt from the Nylander book “Fabrics & Wallpapers for Historical Buildings” sums up why even the small details of using this tape for such an interior makes a difference in telling a story through inanimate objects:

“This period saw a growing fashion for needlework upholstery or upholstery incorporating embroidered strips… Such was a perfect vehicle for a woman’s personal involvement in the complexity of the fashionable interior, reflecting the ideals of domesticity in a visible and concrete way.”

Exploring the archives of and seeing how the rooms were prior to its conversion into a museum.

Notice the brass gasolier before it was painted over with radiator paint as well as the saturated pink drapes before 70+ years sun fading amplified by southern facing exposure.

Thank you to and for your amazing donation of textiles and passementerie for my and research grants. These will be featured for the new furnishings plan of the two third floor bedrooms at the whose mission is to preserve, share, and educate the public about the Historic Hill House and all of Historic Portsmouth!

Currently they are all over because I am in the process of cataloguing and documenting the patterns for the new docent binders. These will be fabricated into furnishings such as bed hangings, windows treatments, slipcovers, and so forth!