information about home design: HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT VANDERHURD?

Thursday, January 13, 2011

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT VANDERHURD?

Photo India Jane Birley/Adam Bray
The installation at Annabel's Club in London

As a textile designer, in the late 1970's, Christine Van Der Hurd's work was commissioned the leading lights in the industry, such as Angelo Donghia and Jack Lenor Larsen. She took to the American market after being educated in London, honing her craft creating textiles for Osborne & Little, Liberty, Etro and Yves Saint Laurent. in 1981 she turned to rug weaving and never looked back.
Today, she is making rugs and fabrics in India, Nepal, the Philippines, New York and Europe, with showrooms in London and New York that service the trade as well as a retail customer. You will find her graphic lively textiles and rugs in The Crosby Street Hotel, Annabel Selldorf's projects, and The Victoria and Albert Museum. I guess you could say she has arrived. Sadly, her son, an active designer and member of the team, passed away in 2009, but his innovative designs continue to inspire the company and propel it forward.
In discussing the wellspring of inspiration, Christine shared, "I never cease to be inspired wherever I look, from flora and fauna to gratings and building facades... Sometimes the inspiration of the most simple of antique textiles will just create in me an endless surge of painting and frivolity... Fabrics have always been part of my life from a young child at my mothers side, choosing liberty fabrics in the 60’s and Celia Birtwell’s whimsical prints for Ossie Clarke and then the Verdure tapestries & French brocades hanging in my father's antiques gallery... I live & love textiles and am completely obsessed by beautiful cloth, whether the simplicity of nomadic stripes or something highly decorative & luxurious as a heavily embroidered Maharaja's wedding coat!"