John Robshaw is an internationally renowned (and internationally influenced) textile designer who was born in Buffalo, N.Y. and is based in Manhattan. The son of a lawyer father and an artistically inclined mother who was a grade school teacher, he is a 1984 alumni of Nichols School in Buffalo. Reflecting on his experience at the prep school, he later wrote:
“I took my first art classes at Nichols, in skylit studios that were set apart from the main campus. I realized right away I had an addiction to art. My early paintings were a bit ‘confused,’ maybe because I was dyslexic, but I dove into photography like a crazed chemist in the darkroom, learning all the tricks of possibility and randomness in developing, and the teacher encouraged experimentation. That’s when I began making what I call my early Man Ray photograms, balancing space and light with objects, and packing in the mystery. My friends included a fast crowd of studious punk rockers who introduced me to dance clubs in the decrepit husk of downtown Buffalo.” [1]
While in high school Robshaw took a three-month summer trip through Europe where he was introduced to the work of both classical painters and traditional craftspeople. Upon graduation he attended Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., where he studied printmaking, painting and drawing, bronze casting, and creative writing. This eclectic mix of disciplines proved crucial to his future aesthetic:
“Shakespeare and poetry were all in the mix, so one medium influenced the others and I never settled on one thing. I couldn’t see settling for one when I could mix them together and learn from them all. The great professors I had imposed very few restrictions, and the studios were open at all hours. I spent a lot of time experimenting, creating, screwing up, and discovering across mediums. My philosophy both in art and in life was to try everything, plunge into my work with tons of energy and openness to whatever might happen, and let my aesthetic unfold along the way using any material, in any space, with anyone.
“ … I became preoccupied with the layers between the mark making and the outcome. I was drawn to the way printmaking let me float around an idea with my hands, and to the way incorporating different processes would slow down my hands and my head. I was delighted to discover that there is no one way to create an image—there are many ways and many routes. Nothing is set. Nothing is right. I still enjoy that today. Where in figure drawing, it really had to look like the damn figure or no one knew what you were drawing, if you didn’t start from a form and didn’t have to show a specific form in a certain way, magic could happen. I have always preferred this sense of charm and mystery; life grabs hold of the work that way.” [2]
Robshaw spent his junior year of college (1986) in Rome, and during his senior year he won a grant to study block printing at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, China, where he found himself in the midst of the student uprisings centered around Tiananmen Square. After returning to the U.S., he earned an MFA in painting and printmaking from Pratt Institute; during this period he made several trips to India (smuggling runway dresses out of the country for one of his professors who had a sequin business there), where he was introduced to the color, variety, and cultural importance of printed fabrics. At the same time, he was pursuing a career in the fine arts, working as an assistant to painter Julian Schnabel and video artist Juan Downey and as an art handler for gallery owner Larry Gagosian as well as creating work of his own. In his memoir, he describes a few critical moments in his evolution from the visual arts to his eventual profession:
“I stumbled on some cheap bolts of heavy cotton denim in a Williamsburg [Brooklyn] warehouse, and I bought the whole lot. This would make for my first big breakthrough in creating art using fabric. I tried painting on it but didn’t like the results, which were too heavy and clumsy. The denim had its own beauty, and the paint interfered as an unnecessary layer. So I hauled it all up to the roof of my building and, Jackson Pollock-style, started throwing bleach across the fabric. I loved how it began to look like photographs or photograms … For another experiment, I borrowed my fashion-designer studio mate’s sewing machine and made collage ‘paintings’ out of various scraps, using the fabric as the medium by sewing patches onto canvas. I simply ran the machine wild to imitate dollops of paint. Women artists at the time were tackling feminist issues with smaller-scale artworks, and making comments on gender and ‘women’s work.’ And here I sat, squarely behind my sewing machine as an aside to this movement, very taken with how interesting, vital, and dynamic the fabrics themselves were, and soon I forgot where I had started from. … I was adding colors but not hiding how the fabric was made. I loved how there were no secrets, nothing hidden—the colors only added to and enhanced the obvious.” [3]
Disillusioned by the commercialism and celebrity-driven nature of the art world and frustrated by the limitations of painting, Robshaw rented a studio on Broome Street in New York’s Soho neighborhood in 2002 where he sold block prints until he noticed that customers were often more interested in purchasing the unique fabrics he had stored in the space, at which point he shifted his focus to running his own bedding/textile business. He designed fabrics for Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, and Giorgio Armani before launching his own line. Requests from consumers again led him to broaden his scope over the years, adding more products and expanding into interior design, counting as his mentors Christopher Colman, Greg Jordan, and Carlos Matta.
Today John Robshaw Textiles introduces 50 to 70 new prints a season, along with such items as candles, eyeglasses, stationery, and loungewear. Robshaw continues to travel widely, learning and adapting regional approaches to color and design, and employing local craftspeople from India, Thailand, and the Philippines to make his wares by hand. He is also a consultant for the nonprofit organization Aid to Artisans which creates business opportunities for marginal and at-risk artisan groups around the world using environmentally sound practices.
For more information on John Robshaw, visit http://www.johnrobshaw.com.
All quotations from John Robshaw with Elizabeth Garnsey, John Robshaw Prints: Textiles, Block Printing, Global Inspiration, and Interiors, Chronicle Books, 2012. (Excerpts at https://books.google.com/books?id=pMZiAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=Franklin+%26+Marshall+College+Robshaw&source=bl&ots=NZNFwTgTq1&sig=FwyzhG2YlduN8ppSy3zhFe8698U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xbeBVY7gBM61sQTU0LewDw&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Franklin%20%26%20Marshall%20College%20Robshaw&f=false.) [Accessed 6/25/2015]
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Katie Armour, “The Talented Mr. Robshaw,” Matchbook, June 2013, http://issuu.com/matchbookmag/docs/matchbook_29_june2013_e266964a5049db. [Accessed 6/25/2015]
Melissa Andersen, “Inside Design: A Look Inside the Mind of Textile Designer John Robshaw,” Gracious Home/Life Suited; March 10, 2014; http://blog.gracioushome.com/inside-design-meet-john-robshaw/. [Accessed 6/25/2015]