Jacqueline Groag

Book excerpt: Czech-born Jacqueline Groag (1903-1985) was an incredibly adept textile designer who trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna during the 1920s under Franz Cisek and Josef Hoffmann. She produced textile designs for the Wiener Werkstatte and some of the Parisian fashion houses while she lived in Vienna. She married the architect and interior designer Jacques Groag - they made a successful team. However, in 1939 they were compelled to emigrate to the UK. Jacqueline Groag continued to produce textile design work for the British market, and after the war her designs could be seen at numerous outlets such as David Whitehead, Grafton, John Lewis and Liberty. For more than 20 years she worked as a freelance designer, supplying designs for carpets, greetings cards, laminates, plastics, textiles, wallpapers and wrapping papers to many firms including Bond-Worth Carpets, British European Airways, the British Overseas Airways Corporation, Dunlop, ICI and London Transport. In 1984 she became a Fellow of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry. She was a prodigious and successful designer to the end of her life. Along with Lucienne Day and Marian Mahler she is seen as central to a new and exciting development in textile design in the 1950s. Together their work is featured in a major exhibition 'Designing Women' which begins in Colorado Springs in September 2008. This is a ground breaking publication on the work of this highly important and influential designer.