Women's Creativity

Abstract

Crossing between the production of textiles intended for both bodily and spatial wrapping, Corona Krause’s contribution to the terrain of modern textiles appears diversely rich. Alumna of the Bauhaus State School in Weimar, and later director of the weaving workshop at the Arts and Crafts School in Hannover, Krause belongs to the wider group of modern artists whose biographic and professional profile remains obscure, but recently cogent due to new archival acquisitions. Not only does this paper aspire to elucidate the thread of the artist’s practice, stressing the need to unknot and retie modern historiographies, but it also anticipates drawing attention to the overlooked role of dress in the attentively orchestrated interior spaces produced in the early decades of the twentieth century. In so doing, it employs oral histories, archival material and observations, as well as writings of key figures of the Weaving Workshop in Weimar and sets out to provide a complex interpretation of the artist’s little-known oeuvre. The contextualisation of the female body and dress within the interdisciplinary spatial production of that time, anticipates influence on a broader discussion on issues of disciplinary relevance and exchange, as well as of female representation and engagement, which was at that time valid, yet volatile.