Marianne Straub
| Marianne Straub | |
|---|---|
Marianne Straub
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| Born |
23 September 1909 Amriswil, Switzerland |
| Died | 8 November 1994 (aged 85) Berlingen, Switzerland. |
| Occupation | Textile designer, academic |
| Notable credit(s) | Royal Designer for Industry (1972); Misha Black Medal (1993), OBE |
Marianne Straub OBE (23 September 1909 – 8 November 1994) was one of the leading commercial designers of textiles in Britain in the period from the 1940s to 1960s. She said her overriding aim was: "to design things which people could afford. ... To remain a handweaver did not seem satisfactory in this age of mass-production".
Linda Parry, curator of modern textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum, described her in 1990 as one of two or three British artists who used their great ability to serve industry.
Although she became a leading name in industrial design – creating upholstery for everything from London Underground to BEA aircraft – she almost always developed her ideas on a handloom before applying her technical knowhow to their manufacture. She believed that if more designers tried out their ideas first, there would be fewer bad results.
Marianne Straub was born in the village of Amriswil, Switzerland, the second of four daughters of the textile merchant Carl Straub and his wife Cécile Kappeler. She had tuberculosis as a young child and spent over four years in a hospital ward, returning home at the age of eight. Straub studied art at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, focusing on hand weaving and textiles in the final two years. Her tutor was Heinz Otto Hürlimann, who had studied at Bauhaus. She then spent six months working as a technician/helper at a mill in her village.
She moved to Bradford, England, arriving in 1932 and undertaking a year's study at Bradford Technical College. One reason for choosing this location was that Swiss technical colleges would not accept women students – and at Bradford she was only the third female student. In an interview in 1990, Straub noted that Germany during the early 1930s was out of the question as she was known for being outspoken and her mother did not want to have to rescue her from prison. The Bradford course covered textile maths, weaving technology and raw materials, as well as cloth construction, and its focus was on woollen materials as the city was a major wool manufacturing centre. The experience gave Straub a keen interest in the uses and varieties of fibres and she developed her skills in double cloth textile construction and the use of power looms.
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