Before everybody buys, borrows, or burrows in a closet for something to wear for Cranbrook Center’s annual House Party, let us consider the fashions of the times. We’re going back to the 1930s, to celebrate the heyday of Loja Saarinen, doyenne of the Cranbrook art scene as designer of interiors, weaver, fashionista, textile designer, businesswoman, landscaper, and modelmaker. Between husband Eliel, daughter Pipsan, and son Eero, the Saarinen family had inventiveness, imagination, skill, and audacity all sewn up. With the Saarinens’ extensive network of friends, colleagues, and students, the atmosphere at the Art Academy must have been rarified indeed.
Small wonder, then, that when it came time for parties, Loja Saarinen could craft her own iconic evening attire for the Art Academy’s Crandemonium Ball of February 1934, including that of her consort, as you can find in the photograph on the flyer for the event of May 21, 2022.
Eliel and Loja Saarinen at the Cranbrook Academy of Art “Crandemonium Ball,” February 1934. Photography by Richard G. Askew, Copyright Cranbrook Archives.
Four our House Party, if you were thinking of the little black dress, Coco Chanel brought this simple concept to the public eye in 1926, with Vogue Magazine proclaiming it “Chanel’s Ford” in homage to the Model T which famously came in any color you wanted as long as it was black. Do note the chevrons (just visible in the Chanel dress) on the Saarinen dress also.
Coco Chanel–the Little Black Dress, as illustrated in American Vogue, October 1926. Source: Vogue.
Post WWI 1920s design was the big break away from the 19th century drapery which required all kinds of padding and corsetry. Chanel prided herself on getting women out of corsets, and they never went back into them. The fashions were shapeless, short, and sack-like at their extreme, with lots of embellishment for evening dresses to make up for their lack of pizazz. Think Fitzgerald and Gatsby.
At this time too, the tuxedo or dinner jacket was becoming acceptable for ordinary men who were not English royalty or American billionaires.
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.Jim Haefner checking his image of Kingswood School Rug No. 31, Reception Hall Rug, Auditorium Lobby Rug. Photographer Leslie Mio, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.Kingswood School Rug No. 31, Reception Hall Rug, Auditorium Lobby Rug. 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.Curator Kevin Adkisson and his attention to detail. Photographer Leslie Mio, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.Maker’s label on 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.
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.Detail of Kingswood School Rug Number 28, Library Rug, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 243½ x 96 inches (618.5 x 243.8 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Kingswood School Blue Rug for Reception Room I, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 183 x 142½ inches (464.8 x 362 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Rug with Animal Motif, 1932; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Linen warp, wool weft, wool file; plain weave with four picks of weft between each row of knots; 151½ x 108 inches (384.8 x 274.3 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Kingswood School Rug No 29 – Rooftops, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 85 x 137½ inches (215.9 x 349.3 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Rug, 1932; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool and linen; 119 x 98 inches (302.3 x 248.9 centimeters) including fringe; Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Rug with Tree Motif, 1930; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer), Lillian Holm (weaver), Lilly Bjerken (weaver); Wool and linen; 131 x 54½ inches (332.7 x 138.4 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Studio Loja Saarinen Rug No. 2, 1929; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer/weaver), Eliel Saarinen (designer), Walborg Nordquist Smalley (weaver); Cotton warp; wool pile; plain weave with ten picks of weft between each row of knots; 110½ x 39 inches (280.7 x 99.1 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Tree of Life Tapestry, circa 1933; Loja Saarinen (designer/weaver); Linen and wool; 60½ x 54 inches (153.7 x 137.2 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. 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
Cranbrook Kitchen Sink 