Unit X: Newyork

During the New York visits there was points from which I could pick out of all three of my visits. However two companies stood out to me due to their differences. Cherry a surface design company that sells all over the world including; USA, Japan, Australia, France etc. And Ross Textiles that also is about surface design but deals primarily in soft furnishings, heavily concentrating on pillows.

Cherry

Judy Ross Textile

Cherry is a company of two co-owner and in their own words will sell where they can make the most profit. They are all about mass producing their prints because more quantity is more profit. They work within swimwear, women’s wear and children’s wear and stationary. They sell their designs to companies such as Wall Mart and other smaller companies. In contrast Ross textiles creates its surface pattern through pain staking hand embroidery. She sells her work to designers and hotels including doing one off pieces like her staircase for the Ritz Carlton. She has all the hand embroider done in India by men and so the quality control is hard firstly because they are all one off pieces but also because they are made half way across the world and made by hand. This is in contrast to Cherry’s mass produce machine prints.

Judy Ross Staircase

I have learnt a lot about the industry from these visits for example how important copyright I as an artist and designer ad how it is generally 20/30% difference. I have also learnt about the cultural differences and how in the western wold embroidery is seen as a women’s job whereas in India it is mans.

Ross textiles really influenced me as it relates to my own practice of embroidery. After seeing how much importance she puts on hand embroidery I want to relate this back to me own work. This has given me a different approach when looking at my own work and how I might want to concentrate more on hand embroidery because I don’t do much of that. Also it is that there is a lot of demand and work in the industry when it comes to prints so I plan to take a new approach in my own practice and try to work more into printing and using illustrator and Photoshop in my work.

I have always had my mind set on wanting to teach but these visits have opened my eyes to other career options I could take. I always thought of it like I could never do that, but I could if I wanted for example in the rug company another place I visited. One of their designers was from Manchester metropolitan. These visits have showed me to always aim big and have high aspirations. Although I do still feel like I want to teach, I would love some work experience for a year or so in the industry to get a feel for it.