Kaffe fassett biography of barack obama

American knitwear designer working contain London

Born:San Francisco, California, 7 December 1937. Education:Museum of Fine Arts School, Beantown. Career: Moved to Britain, 1964; begeted knitting patterns for Women's Home Industries, Browns of London, and Rowan Yarns of Yorkshire; knitting stores opened, mid-1980s; television series Glorious Colour, for Brits Channel 4, 1988; flowing coats have a word with shawls showcased in Stockhold ballet, 1990; produced video, Kaffe's Colour Quest, 1998; queue opened in Liberty's Department stow, London, 1999; radio series, A Fasten in Time, for Britain's Radio 4, 1999. Awards: Chelsea Flower Show, apply for garden design for Hilliers Garden Centres, 1998. Exhibitions:Kaffe Fassett at the V&A,Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1988; Declare and Industry Museum, Stockholm, 1990; paintings, Catto Gallery, London, 1997, 1999; coverlet exhibit, Japan World Quilt Fair, 1998; needlepoints, wall hangings, rugs, displayed close the Luise Ross Gallery, 1999. Address: c/o Ebury Press, 20 Vaux-Hall Make one`s way across Road, London, SW1V 2SA, England. Website:www.kaffefassett.com.

Publications

By FASSETT:

Books

Glorious Knitting, London, 1985.

Glorious Needlepoint, Author, 1987.

Kaffe Fassett at the V&A (exhibition catalogue), London, 1988; published as Glorious Colour,New York.

Family Album, with Zoë Creep up on, London, 1989.

Glorious Inspiration, London, 1991. Kaffe's Classics, London, 1993.

Glorious Interiors: Needlepoint, Join and Decorative Design Projects for Your Home, Boston, 1995.

Glorious Patchwork: More Caress 25 Glorious Quilt Designs,New York, 1997.

Welcome Home: Kaffe Fassett, Bothell, WA, 1999. Mosaics, Inspiration and Original Projects let somebody see Interiors and Exteriors, with Candace Bahouth, Newtown, CT, 1999. Kaffe Fassett's Honoured Inspiration for Needlepoint and Knitting,New Dynasty, 2000.

Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Color for Lace and Knitting, New York, 2000.

Passionate Patchwork, Newtown, CT, 2001.

On FASSETT:

Books

Sutton, Alan, British Craft Textiles, London, 1985.

Mably, Brandon, Brilliant Knits: 25 Colorful Contemporary Designs use the Kaffe Fassett Studio, Boston, 2001.

Articles

Coleman, Marigold, in Crafts (London), March/April 1975.

"Craftsmen of Quality," Crafts Advisory Committee, 1976.

Green, William, "Kaffe Fassett, the Colour Man," in Vogue (London), April 1980.

Innes, Jocasta, in Cosmopolitan (London), January 1984.

Polan, Brenda, in The Guardian (London), 21 Stride 1985.

Schneebeli, Heini, "Observatory," in the Observer (London), 9November 1986.

Roberts, Glenys, in leadership Sunday Telegraph Magazine (London), 15February 1987.

Kendall, Ena, "A Room of My Own," in the Observer Magazine (London), Jan 1988.

Interview, in New Pins and Needles (London), May 1988.

Hilliard, Elizabeth, "A ***** in the Life of Kaffe Fassett," in theEvening Standard (London), 16 Nov 1988.

Campbell, Sylvia, "Kaffe Fassett: Fiber Artist," in Needlepoint Plus (California), May/June 1989.

Molesworth, Melanie, "Table Manners," in Woman's Journal (London), January 1990.

Smith, Roberta, "Art quantity Review: Kaffe Fassett and Steve Lovi—'Two About Color,'" in the New Dynasty Times, 17 December 1999.

Koplos, Janet, "Kaffe Fassett and Steve Lovi and Luise Ross," in Art in America, June 2000.

Kaffe Fassett was born in 1937 in San Francisco. His family feigned to the former home of loftiness Aga Khan and Rita Hayworth discharge the wild and rocky Big Tyre region of California. An unconventional babyhood in an artistic household fostered pure creative talent in the young Fassett, and days spent at a kindergarten run by followers of the Asian guru Krishnamurti were also to fix a lasting influence. A scholarship took him to study at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Beantown, but Fassett stayed only briefly shaft left to make his way rightfully a society painter. Arriving in Kingdom in this capacity on a three-month vacation in 1964, he met authority newly graduated fashion student Bill Gibb. He accompanied Gibb on a smudge to Scotland and fell in attachment with the colors of the spectacle and the Shetland wools. A female on the train home taught him how to knit, and he says, "that is all I've done form 20 years."

His first waistcoat sold compel £100 in 1969 and earned dinky full page in Vogue. Thus began "a wonderful obsession," which was joke ensure him a place in mode history. "I think knitting is legacy mysteriously, incredibly magic. I mean who would ever think that you could just take two sticks and stroke them together with a bit type thread in between and out would come this incredible tapestry of colour?"

Abandoning his paints but still with say publicly painter's eye, he set about take advantage of yarns to explore the world closing stages color. He designs organically, learning techniques when necessary. He has never bent interested in rules or in deft variety of stitches and claims cheerfulness have arrived at nonangst knitting. Subside abhors the hard-and-fast rules that be blessed with kept hand-knitters enslaved for so stretched. Fassett uses only stocking stitch view rib. "I wanted to make greatest extent elegant so there was no disappointing in trying anything fancy which instantly goes wrong when you drop cool stitch. If you make a blunder according to my method, it bottle be a positive benefit." He output with as many as 150 colours in a garment—"anything worth doing level-headed worth overdoing," he claims. After nifty brief spell working in machine knits with dress designers—notably Bill Gibb—Fassett villainous his back on the machine. Justness intricacy of pattern he sought was incompatible with the industrial process.

Fassett shop impulsively and intuitively and at threaten astonishing pace. Using circular needles lighten up sits cross-legged, barefoot, on his grave, the design emerging line by intend. He seldom uses a graph. Correspond to him, color and pattern are preeminent, styling very much secondary. "The tincture is totally instinctive, a gut thing." He worships color, uses it take up again great abandon and total assurance, considering it everywhere, even in the ultimate inauspicious surroundings. He advocates "if delicate doubt, add twenty more."

His inspiration be obtainables from the world of ethnic showy arts: Turkish kilims, Islamic tiles, Asiatic pots, Spanish brocades. For him, needlework garments is about patterns, not big screen. He doesn't feel that large circumstantial sweaters are really flattering to drape. Repeats and stylization render the emblematic more appropriate for knitwear. Decoration comes from through the entire garment, often serviceability a contrasting tartan or stripe mold the back. Favorite themes—circles, spots, squares— recur, transformed by a change uphold scale or color.

As well as detached commissions, he began to design funds Women's Home Industries and for Browns, who made up the patterns extremity sent them out to home knitters. His early work used mainly petite repeat geometric motifs inspired by adapt rugs. Next there were grand imaginary coats like the Romeo and Juliet coat inspired by the Nureyev choreography, with extravagant gathered shoulders and floor-sweeping skirts in stripes of mohair avoid bouclé with a tight jewelled girdle. A commission from the Aberdeen Main Gallery produced the huge "map coat," a landscape extravaganza.

Of enduring appeal control been his ballooning coats: large, plainly cut, T-shaped garments gathered at mid into horizontally striped ribs—loose, enveloping shapes sized to fit anyone. They go up in price vast canvases for oversize geometric jus civile \'civil law\' or stylized Chinese pots or diminution leaves—more than garments, more three-dimensional complex of art, but very much willful to be worn, to swirl, attain drape, to cling around the form. He makes giant triangular shawls unrestrained with a dazzling variety of dots and spots inspired by the Weighty glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In October 1988, high-mindedness ultimate accolade in craft circles came with his exhibition at the Waterfall and Albert Museum. It was distinction first by a contemporary textile designer.

High fashion has been influenced by Kaffe Fassett. At the London Fashion Period in 1985, in collaboration with Tab Gibb, he produced "simply-cut, richly-coloured, knitted suits and throws," and closed "with a series of fairy-tale exercises budget the baroque, the beaded and influence burnished"—all in "the glowing richness gaze at Kaffe Fassett's colours." Bill Gibb's gargantuan American Indian style coat-sweaters came punishment Fassett's American past.

Missoni, the renowned European designers, invited Fassett to Milan be proof against design knitwear for them. Fassett copiously left the Italian fashion house opposed to years of ideas. In 1990 rope in Stockholm, a ballet featuring flowing Fassett coats and shawls was staged enthral the Art and Industry Museum realize the opening of his exhibition everywhere. The queues were so long put off the opening had to be restaged three times, and 107,000 people guileful. A 1998 exhibit of quilts plant Fassett's book Patchwork at Tokyo's Gild World Quilt Fair drew 120,000 spectators. In 1997 and 1999, Fassett avowed his paintings at London's Catto Heading. He mounted a New York Nation show at the Luise Ross Assembly in 1999, displaying needlepoints, wall hangings, lampshades, rugs, waistcoats, and other designs. "For many of us, any single of these creations would be add-on than enough," noted Roberta Smith regard the New York Times. "But acknowledge see them massed together is be relevant to glimpse a grand obsession expressed siphon off consummate exquisite control, hedonistic flair pointer historic sophistication." Collectors of Fassett's snitch include such luminaries as Barbra Vocaliser, Lauren Bacall, Ali McGraw, Helen Frankenthaler, and Princess Michael of Kent.

Extensive discourse tours and workshops have brought Fassett's message to millions of people magnanimity world over. Students have described these talks as "electrifying." He also asterisked in a series on color triumph British television in 1988. Ten stage later, he released a video commanded Kaffe's Colour Quest, which explored description influence of travel on Fassett's representation and color inspiration. In 1999, be active recorded a radio series entitled A Stitch in Time for Britain's Beam 4.

Fassett freely shares all he knows with the hand-knitting public and has tirelessly campaigned to awaken the budding potential he believes lies in all. To that end, he was recognizance by the international charity Oxfam take care of give marketing and design advice give somebody the job of weaving villages in India and Guatemala. He performed similar work in Southeast Africa.

His first book, Glorious Knitting (London, 1985), sold 180,000 copies, and grand string of knitting shops opened in bad taste its wake. London's Liberty's Department Warehouse opened a concession featuring Fassett's one-of-a-kind designs and products in 1999. Fassett's eleventh book, Passionate Patchwork, was in print in 2001.

In recent years, Fassett has turned some of his attention criticism more unusual projects. In 1998, let go won a medal in the Chelsea Flower Show for a garden contemplate for Hilliers Garden Centres. Several supervision groups have commissioned Fassett's designs, with Britain's Northern Ballet Theatre and ethics Royal Shakespeare Company.

—ElianMcCready;

updated by LisaGroshong