Feb

Photographing the Rugs of Studio Loja Saarinen

In 2021, the home of Loja Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy of Art, which she shared with her husband Eliel, was designated as a site in the Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios program. As the team at the Center were going through the process of researching Loja, the too-often-overlooked designer of textiles, gardens, and clothing, we were constantly reminded that the rugs created by Loja and her professional weaving studio, Studio Loja Saarinen, were poorly documented in our records.

Studio Loja Saarinen made rugs, window treatments, wall hangings, upholstery fabrics, and more at Cranbrook between 1928 and 1942. Many of the Studio’s largest rugs were made for Kingswood School for Girls between 1930 and 1932. Because of the fragility of the rugs, and through natural wear-and-tear, almost all of the original Studio Loja Saarinen rugs were put in storage at Cranbrook Art Museum in the 1970s and 1980s.

Loja Saarinen, circa 1934. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

We have excellent archival records about the operation of the studio, including records of yarn orders and charts of the time spent weaving rugs (it was a lot!). But the rugs are very large, and often, we only had black-and-white photographs of the rugs on the floor in the 1930s. Color photographs were limited to poorly distorted slides, or photographs of portions of the rugs taken on early digital cameras while the rugs were half-rolled-up in storage.

We had almost no ‘born digital’ high-resolution photographs of Loja’s work–these are the best kind of photographs for sharing her work in slides, online, or in print. The lack of excellent, high quality images limited not only how we at Cranbrook understood and shared Loja’s legacy, but also made it difficult for students or scholars researching Loja Saarinen to get a complete sense of her artistic output.

This winter, as the Center prepares for our next fundraiser, A House Party at Cranbrook Celebrating Loja Saarinen on May 21, 2022, it has become mission-critical to get better documentation of Studio Loja Saarinen’s rugs.

Enter in our latest project!

Jim Haefner and his assistant set up the camera in Cranbrook Art Museum’s Vault. Photographer Kevin Adkisson, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

On January 7, 2022, photographer James Haefner and his assistant Erik Henderson, with the help of Center Curator Kevin Adkisson, Center Associate Registrar Leslie Mio, Cranbrook Art Museum Registrar Corey Gross, Cranbrook Art Museum Head Preparator Jon Geiger, and Jon’s installation crew embarked on a very ambitious project: documenting all the Studio Loja Saarinen rugs in the Cranbrook collections.

First, we had to take the several-hundred-pound rugs down from racks where they are stored, rolled. Then, we covered the floor in clean plastic drop cloths. With a camera bolted via a vise-grip to the ceiling of the Cranbrook Art Museum Collections Wing, and controlled via computer from a remote workstation, we unrolled, photographed, and rerolled over forty works of Studio Loja Saarinen’s functional art.

*Kingswood School Rug No. 3*, 1928-1929; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer); Linen warp, wool weft; 66½ x 49 inches (168.9 x 124.5 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.

No detail went undocumented, from weaver’s signatures knotted into the face of a rug, to maker’s labels written and sewn on by Loja herself.

Below is just a fraction of the forty-plus pieces photographed:

*Kingswood School Rug No. 31, Reception Hall Rug, Auditorium Lobby Rug,* 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 312 x 144 inches (792.5 x 365.8 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.

It was a joy to unroll and see these pieces up close after knowing many of them for years through black-and-white images. While even these photographs do not do justice to seeing their beauty in person, having such high-resolution photography of Studio Loja Saarinen’s rugs means that future scholars and fans of Loja Saarinen will be able to have a richer understanding of her, and Cranbrook’s, remarkable legacy.

For even more Loja Saarinen, join the Center in person or online on May 21, 2022 for A House Party at Cranbrook Celebrating Loja Saarinen. We’ll be premiering a new, thirty-minute documentary about Loja, produced by the Center, at the event–you don’t want to miss it!

– Leslie S. Mio, Associate Registrar, and Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Feb

Cranbrook’s Great Books (Part II)

In Part I of this post, we explored Cranbrook’s love of the book, from its origins with founders George and Ellen Booth, to the existing special collections at the Archives and Academy of Art. I invite you now to learn of the many rare, valuable, and historical tomes whose existence may be unknown to most or simply overlooked in collections at the Schools, Institute of Science, and two historic homes cared for by the Center for Collections and Research: Saarinen House and Smith House.

Hoey Patch Collection at the Cranbrook School Library. Courtesy of Kate Covintree, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools.

Like the Academy of Art, although not at all on the same scale, books from George and Ellen’s Cranbrook House Library were dispersed to the Cranbrook Schools Libraries, now comprised of five separate spaces. Following the Booth’s example, Cranbrook School Headmaster Harry D. Hoey (1950-1964) and Latin teacher George Patch (1928-1944, Emeritus 1944-1950) donated 120 books from their personal libraries to the School’s library in the 1950s, forming one of several special collections. Known as the Hoey Patch Collection, all of the volumes focus on an aspect of Abraham Lincoln or the American Civil War.

*He Knew Lincoln*, a fictionalized account written by Ida Tarbell, a progressive journalist, and published in 1907. The book’s custodial history is documented with correspondence from the author, written directly on the inside of the book. Courtesy of Kate Covintree, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools.

Highlights include a First edition of The Life of Abraham Lincoln, the first full-scale biography of the President. Written by newspaper editor J.G. Holland, it was published shortly after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Also included is a first edition, two-volume set of the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant penned his autobiography shortly before his death in 1885 as a means of financial support for his family. It was published with the support of his friend Mark Twain by the Charles L. Webster Company (owned by Twain’s nephew).

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Feb

Adler/Schnee’s Flower Fiesta

Are you enjoying the snow this winter? Or do you need something to brighten your February mood? Have you considered fake flowers?

This week, as the country was pummeled by winter storms, I was busy in Cranbrook Archives researching for my History of American Architecture: Eero Saarinen and His Circle lecture series. One important member of Eero’s circle of designers? Ruth Adler Schnee.

Ruth, a 1946 graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Design Department, was known for her printed textiles, interior designs, and the store she operated with her husband, Edward, in Detroit from 1948 to the 1977. In Cranbrook Archives, we have the Edward and Ruth Adler Schnee Papers, which includes a wide variety of designs, notes, samples, and PR materials.

Adler/Schnee, Inc. on Harmonie Park. The design store was located at 240 Grand River East in Detroit between 1964 and 1977. Photograph February 1965. Copyright Cranbrook Archives.

As I looked for materials related to Ruth’s work on the General Motors Technical Center—the subject of my lecture Monday—I came across this charming fold-out advertisement from the winter of 1966. Although it has nothing to do with my upcoming talk, it certainly brightened my mood, and I wanted to share it with you! The outside reads:

Sometimes it’s June in January…but at A/S it’s Bloomin’ February

The ad copy gets even better inside. Underneath a bright-pink line drawing of Scandinavian, Japanese, Danish, and Mexican home goods surrounded by Ferry-Morse seeds, a cat, birds, and flowers, it reads:

Stamp out snow with fake and fabulous flowers!
Put posies on everything—put posies in everything.
Color runs riot at Adler/Schnee Flower Fiesta
With kooky dried flowers ala Dr. Seuss; passionate pillows, dizzy dinnerware, palpitating papergoods, terrific totes and much marvelous more—all bursting with scintillating springtime.
Kick winter gloom and check Adler/Schnee, where even Harmonie Park itself is coming up new and exciting.

This pamphlet made me smile, and gets first prize in the alliterative Olympics. Based on other handwritten records in the Archives, it is possible Ruth herself wrote this little ditty (she wrote and designed much of the firm’s PR materials). Again based off other mailers, it seems likely the Schnees mailed out between 5,000 and 15,000 of these large fold-out advertisements.

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