TEXTILES 101 with Rachel Doriss

   Rachel Doriss has been pursuing an interest in textiles since 1996 when she entered The Rhode Island School of Design's undergraduate textile program. An art major for the 2 prior years at the University of Massachusetts's Amherst campus, Rachel brought training in printmaking and painting to RISD, where she worked in both printed and woven fabrics. Graduation in 1999 brought about a move to Brooklyn NY and a job in the custom department of Echo, designing printed silk scarves. In November of the following year, Rachel accepted the position of designer in Pollack's design studio. http://www.pollackassociates.com/

     Last night in Portland, Oregon my good friends, Jayson and Carrie Gates invited me to their October forum at Oregon Chapter of IIDA. Their guest speaker was Rachel Doriss, senior textile designer for Pollack Associates. It was like being in design school again. very refreshing. She lectured on various  fibers, weaving techniques,how yarns are made etc. i.e. cotton, flax, silk,wool.basket weaves,sheers,velvets, Jacquards, non wovens, etc. 
Her passion for design and textiles shined with her many visuals. She also explained many different weave techniques. The tactile  presentation was the best. the raw wool smelled like the state fair. It was uniquely oily still from the lanolin.
   I think the best part of the evening was meeting new designers and having wonderful conversations with old friends that  I haven't seen in years. It was a very nice evening.
For more information about textiles, You should view Pollack's website. They have a very extensive collection with a wide variety of patterns, textures and prices. If you find something that you can't live without  you will need to hire an interior designer. Pollack is a wholesale textile collection sold through the interior design trade only. For more information about hiring an interior designer contact me at johnthompsondesigner@yahoo.com

I have added some photos of Pollack textiles that I have selected for various projects for my clients. After I downloaded them I noticed that they are all mostly Jacquards. I must confess, I was more interested in the   graphic design of the textile more than the weave. OK I love lots of pattern. 



viscose/cotton Jacquard woven textile on a lounge chair



wool animal print on the Aristo Larsen chair near window, a cotton/viscose Jacquard weave on an antique chair.





  The pale mint pillow on wool satin weave sofa is a cotton/silk Jacquard weave.



I don't know the fiber content (possibly a cotton blend) but I found this  armless sofa covered in a Pollack Greek Key Jacquard pattern in a consignment shop. This brings back old memories as I sold it to a designer years ago.




Jacquard weaving makes possible in almost any loom the programmed raising of each warp thread independently of the others. This brings much greater versatility to the weaving process, and offers the highest level of warp yarn control. This mechanism is probably one of the most important weaving inventions as Jacquard shedding made possible the automatic production of unlimited varieties of pattern weaving.




In former times, the heddles with warp ends to be pulled up were manually selected by a second operator, apart from the weaver. This was known as a drawloom. It was slow and labour intensive, with practical limitations on the complexity of the pattern.



The Jacquard process and the necessary loom attachment are named after their inventor, Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752 - 1834). He recognized that although weaving was intricate, it was repetitive, and saw that a mechanism could be developed for the production of sophisticated patterns just as it had been done for the production of simple patterns



 sincerely,
John

Pursuing Excellence in Design