Textile, Inside-Outside

Early in his career, L. Anton Maix was hired by Hans Knoll to work in his furniture company. During his years there, he befriended many Knoll designers, including architect Serge Chermayeff. Maix was not a designer himself, but had an extraordinary skill for initiating collaborations with some of the most important names in mid-century design. When he started his own textile production company, rather than work exclusively with textile designers, Maix invited architects, graphic designers and artists to create designs for printed textiles, including Chermayeff, Jens Risom, Paul Rand, and Alvin Lustig.
Chermayeff was an important figure in the British modernist movement, designing such landmarks as the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, East Sussex. During his tenure in the United States, Chermayeff, who trained as a painter, became interested in the use of color in architecture, and his buildings have been described as “colorful, three-dimensional geometric abstractions.” The museum currently holds 13 drawings for residential architecture by Serge Chermayeff, and this screen-printed textile – a loose, sketch-like design of brightly colored planes – is very much in keeping with the feeling of the drawings.

Textile, Inside-Outside; Designed by Serge Ivan Chermayeff (American, b. Grozny, Chechnya 1900–1996); Manufactured by L. Anton Maix, Inc. (United States); linen; H x W: 132.7 × 87.6 cm (52 1/4 × 34 1/2 in.); American Textile History Museum Collection, gift of Giles Kotcher; 2016-35-102