Reliëfkleed

Two shades of white wool and a geometric design using a variety of weaves and knots: this is all that weaver Kitty van der Mijll Dekker used to create this rug. With its simplicity and its ingenious construction, this textured rug stood out from the work of her contemporaries (decorative artists), who subcontracted the production of their designs. Van der Mijll Dekker learned this optimal utilization of the basic principles of weaving at the Bauhaus. Like most women who participated in the Bauhaus design course, she was sent to the weaving workshop after completing the ‘Vorkurs’ (the basic preparatory year), as her talents were felt to be more suited to the ‘decorative’ than the ‘constructive’. When she returned to the Netherlands in 1932, she founded her own studio, which soon achieved renown. The textured rug went as a showpiece to the World’s Fairs in Brussels and Paris, where it won awards. In 1937, the rug even went on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, as a model of modern weaving.