Saturday, February 21, 2009

Orbis Wirth was a Swiss born inventor of whom little is know.

i think the story is intriguing:
so ... in the 1920's  Orbis Wirth developed a fabric printing technique 
that "allowed for the simultaneous laying of an infinite amount of colour onto fabrics of many qualities" the process involved layering of wax on wide metal cylinders which were rolled over wet fabrics and producing this perfect smudgy/marble-y pattern. however the process cant be recreated and each cylinder can only be used once and so it ceased to exist.
in 1980:
Jakob Schlaefper Company the swiss fabric company recreated these cylinders used 50 years previously they ran into the same problems and so stopped production with a a few of these wax rolls left unused.........
in 2007:
a memberof the Dries Van Noten design team came upon the orbis technique in a fabric printing book from the 20's. and "Some detective work ensued and the Dries Van Noten design team were quite quickly lead to the Jakob Schlaepfer Co., their archives and that stock room. Those last wax cylinders were found.
In collaboration with Dries Van Noten, Schlaepfer printed up the last meters of these Orbis prints possible using those last few remaining wax rolls, creating, what would become, limited edition, exclusive pieces within the Dries Van Noten Autumn Winter 2008/09 collection."! ! ! !
a story of fabric, suspense and intrigue:{)

Thursday, February 5, 2009