Twentieth-Century Textiles, Francesca Galloway and Sue Kerry

Twentieth‑Century Textiles is a captivating visual survey of key textile innovations from 1900 to 2000. Featuring over 100 outstanding examples—from floral-print wall hangings by the Wiener Werkstätte’s Dagobert Pêche to the bold Art Deco weavings of Raoul Dufy, Alberto Lorenzi and Marion Dorn—the book repositions textile design at the heart of modernist visual culture. Through vibrant colour and metallic-silk weaves, it reveals how textiles both shaped and mirrored societal change across Europe and the UK. 

Beyond its aesthetic allure, the volume is rich with design history and cultural context: it situates pieces like Henri Stéphany’s 1925 Exposition wall coverings and British 1930s furnishing fabrics within broader narratives of industrial modernisation, artistic migration, and craftsmanship revival. This is a textural journey through time—where warp meets weft, art meets design, and fabric becomes a silent yet eloquent storyteller.

About the Author
Francesca Galloway is a renowned dealer, curator, and scholar of global textiles, based in London. With a career spanning Christie’s, Spink & Son and her own gallery, she has been pivotal in championing understudied fabrics—particularly Indian, Islamic and European weaving traditions. Her expertise brings a discerning eye to this century‑spanning survey.

Sue Kerry is a textile historian and writer whose focus on modern fabric design complements Galloway’s visual curation, making the book as informative as it is visually sumptuous

Publication date: 2007
Publisher: ACC Art Books
Pages: 200
ISBN: 978 1851495504