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Spring 2013
01
02
01 Overlapping Squares
rag rug (detail)
02 Drawers filled with
colourful yarns in Kaffe
Fassett’s studio
03 M&S tapestry
04 Kaffe Fassett and
Brandon Mably’s dining
room, from Kaffe’s book,
Glorious Interiors
© Debbie Patterson
05 Kaffe Fassett
04
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Issue 30
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Into the
rainbow
Over the course of fifty years, one man has created an astonishing
number of original designs that span nearly all needlecraft techniques.
Ros Weaver visits Kaffe Fassett’s London home and finds herself in a
magical wonderland of colour and pattern
W
onderful is the adjective Kaffe Fassett
uses the most. And you can tell he
means it. It is also the most appropriate
word to describe his home and studio in a leafy
street in North West London, around which
Kaffe’s partner Brandon Mably gives me a quick
tour before our interview. It’s a wonderland of
colour and pattern where every available surface
is adorned with paintings, quilts, mosaics, knitted
and needlepoint cushions and rag rugs in his
inimitable eclectic and highly colourful style.
He uses the word as soon as we meet. It
turns out Kaffe is a big fan of our big sister
magazine HALI.
“You can see all the
influences there have been
from HALI” he enthuses.
“There are so many carpet
influences in my work…
these natural artists out
in the desert are putting
together a little traditional
pattern that they’ve known
about for years and years and
years, so of course it’s got
spirit, life! It’s just wonderful!
There’s a spirit about work
that’s created on the hoof
and that’s what I love about
it. If they can’t squeeze a bird
in the size it’s supposed to
05
be in the design, they just
make it smaller, squash it. All of those wonderful
inspiring things give me courage in my own work.”
An unconventional childhood in 1940s California
led to Kaffe enrolling at the Museum of Fine Arts
School in Boston. “I lasted a few months and said
‘OK. If this is what you call education, I can do it
for myself!’”
He came to London in 1964 to paint, and his
paintings – large still lifes – are dotted around
the house. I wonder why most of them show
domestic objects. “I didn’t like the idea of being
held back in my work,” he explains, “I thought I’d
make a world on a table, so I didn’t have an excuse
not to paint. I’ve had so many excuses since. Of
course, by making textiles I eventually abandoned
it – more or less.”
Kaffe is now famed for his knitting patterns and
books on needlecraft. Knitting was something he
stumbled upon soon after his arrival in the UK. On
a journey to Scotland in 1964 with the budding
young fashion designer Bill Gibb, he fell in love
with the colours of the landscape and the soft
Shetland wool. A woman he met on the way back
to London taught him how to knit. It became a
lifelong passion. But isn’t knitting a less immediate
process than painting?
“Oh no, for me it’s
immediate. I’m fast. I’m
improvising all the time. I love
seeing a thing grow, adding to
it or changing it midstream. It’s
very open to interpretation.
“I was told ‘One day you’ll
design for the Missonis’, and
the first piece I had in Vogue
they were on the phone.” This
was in 1969 when a waistcoat
he had knitted to go with a
Bill Gibb outfit sold for £100.
“When I first went to work
for them they had the most
amazing palette I’d ever seen
in a commercial firm. I was so
turned on by their colours. I said, ‘Where did you
pick up on them?’ and she said: ‘Tai found this
Japanese calendar and he used the colours from
that.’ They were ancient oriental colours and they
were fabulous. And that’s what put us both on
the map. I made a collection that was, strangely
enough, very biblical when it came out. It was
stripes, but I used a black base and then these
amazing burnt rusts, golds and lavenders and a
touch of dirty pink, and it became this fantastic
collection that rocked New York when it went into
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Spring 2013
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06 Floating Peony cushion
07 Kaffe Fassett working in
his studio
08 A colourful blanket by
Kaffe Fassett
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09 Bekah rug (detail)
Bloomingdales.” It’s clear Kaffe has lost none of
his early enthusiasm for needlecraft. Sitting on
floor cushions (his own needlepoint designs)
and brimming with passion for his subject, Kaffe
brings the freewheeling 1960s back to life. “In
my formative days, when I first came over here,
Marsha Hunt grabbed me one day and said:
‘Honey, you’ve gotta loosen up!’” It’s a skill he has
evidently mastered.
The Legacy
The artist soon embraced skills other than knitting.
Each he has made his own, becoming a master
craftsman as well as a highly original designer. His
rag rugs – astonishing decorative works – have
become highly collectable. “They are something
I love,” he says, “Such a sexy texture. I swoop into
Oxfam and scoop up all the red and pink, or
whatever colour I need. It’s very immediate.”
I can’t imagine how he fits it all in, but apart
from creating thousands of needlecrafted works,
several books and a TV programme, Kaffe even
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has time to take his art out into the community.
He enjoyed a rag-rug project he led with primary
school children: “They made all these wild faces
as rag rugs in little panels. When you tell a story to
a child you can see that film playing in their head.
When people are shy about using colour I say:
‘Have you ever seen a boring child’s painting? It
doesn’t exist. They are immediate. You were that
child once. Get back there.’”
He seems equally enthused by all of the
numerous techniques he espouses, but which is
his favourite?
“You know, each one of them has its qualities.
I mean you can do something very painterly with
needlepoint. But on the other hand,” and his voice
goes very soft, “Knitting. I think for pure joy and
therapeutic deep healing, knitting has to be it.
Ask any new knitter – the yarn passing through
your fingers, and seeing something grow… it’s
very difficult to explain why it’s so magical and
mesmerising but I’m completely appeased
when I’m knitting”.
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10 Flower Trellis rug
11 A collection of fabrics
for quilts in the studio
12 Vegetable rug
13 Carnival quilt
‘‘
’’
Have you ever seen
a painting by a child
that’s boring? You
were that child once.
Get back there!
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The reason why I am in his sitting room is the
forthcoming retrospective exhibition of Kaffe
Fassett’s work at London’s Fashion & Textile
Museum, and the house is full of piles and
packages of his work waiting to be dispatched to
Sue Timney, who is designing the show.
“It’s a real retrospective, going back to the first
sketches, and little swatches, things I did for Bill
Gibb and Missoni – and then it’ll be a kaleidoscope
of pattern and colour. It’s absolutely insane!”
Sounds like fun. A journey through 50 years
of colour that even survived the drab years of the
1990s and 2000s.
“I was a total freak then,” Kaffe says. “I’d look
out at my audiences and there would be a sea of
black. For years the funeral went on. Oh my God,
it’s been hell.” When Kaffe designed costumes
and sets for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s
As You Like It in 2000, the young actors were not
keen on wearing scarlet robes. “The director,
Greg Doran said: ‘Look, Kaffe is not afraid of
colour, and looking at you, I’m afraid you guys are.’
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Everyone was in shades of grey. There wasn’t a
speck of colour among them. But colour is coming
back. My audiences are a lot jollier now – I often
compliment them saying ‘You look like a lovely
field of flowers.’”
The RSC production gave Kaffe a chance to
reinterpret 16th-century textile techniques. “I
was able to knit, to make rag rugs, and stitch
these great big cushions. They said ‘Don’t bother
stitching cushions, we can paint them!’ And I said
but wool is a sexy texture, the lights are gonna love
it, and they did. They looked gorgeous, these big
velvet-backed Bargello cushions.”
These are just one of the delights that await the
visitors to the exhibition which will also feature a
‘feeling wall’, to complete what promises to be a
sensual feast. Wonderful.
Kaffe Fassett – A Life in Colour
Fashion & Textile Museum
22 March – 29 June 2013
Kaffe Fassett: Dreaming in Colour: An
Autobiography, Stewart, Tabori & Chang