ARTIST RUGS & CARPETS: THE EDWARD JAMES FOOTPRINT AND PAWPRINT CARPETS 1930s
Image: The Tilly Losch Footprint Carpet. Image courtesy of West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.
By Deborah Nash
Little did Tilly Losch know when tripping along the carpet from the bathroom to the bedroom with wet feet in the early 1930s that her husband would think to immortalise her footprints by weaving them into the carpet. But the Viennese dancer was married to poet, collector and Surrealist patron Edward James (1907-1984) who collaborated with painter Salvador Dalí and interior designer Norris Wakefield to create a fantasy dream house in the shooting lodge of his West Sussex estate.
James’ marriage to Tilly proved just as fleeting as her wet footprints and by 1934 the couple had divorced, as a result of the dancer’s multiple infidelities. The Footprint Carpet outlasts them both. It was finally laid down some years after their separation in West Dean House in 1948, the ancestral home of the James’ family. Today the house is West Dean College, a centre for education and training in conservation and the applied arts. The footprint carpet can be found on the spiral staircase leading to the attic and is part of the day-to-day interior of college life.
In the grounds of West Dean there is also the shooting lodge, now privately owned, that was once Monkton House, which James filled with Surrealist objects that included Mae West Lips sofas and a Hands Chair designed by Dalí. Delightfully eccentric, James had another carpet made for the entrance hall and upper landing of Monkton House, this time patterned with the pawprints of his beloved Irish wolfhound who, he claimed, was more faithful to him than his wife.
Image: The Pawprint Carpet. Image courtesy of Christopher Ison/West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.
Both carpets embody a relationship, in the woven prints themselves and in the collaboration with designers and weavers to realise these unique commissions. They also encapsulate the spirit of Surrealism in their attempt to capture and celebrate the intangible and the uncanny.
SAVE THE DATE: Upcoming Selvedge online talk, Rugs, Wednesday 12 April 2023 at 18:00 BST (British Summer Time). More details will be released soon.