Thank you to two anonymous visitors, Steve from DC, Jake from DC, Vera from MD, Jim from MD, Lucy from NJ, Sue from PA, and Zobo from VA for the creativity!
Thomas Eakins, Miss Amelia Van Buren, c. 1891. Oil on canvas, 45 x 32 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1927
What is Amelia Thinking?
…Did I leave the stove on?
Why are you staring at me, I can own u!
How much longer is this painting going to take?
I really, really! would like to scratch my nose
Why me?
I’m bored.
God, I have to tinkle.
Why am I stuck in this portrait? When will I get OUT!
(Left) Photo: Rhiannon Newman (Middle) Margo Petitti. Image courtesy of the artist (Right) Image courtesy of the artist
In conjunction with Made in the USA, we’re celebrating contemporary American ingenuity by highlighting some of our favorite American artisans featured in the museum shop. Today we interview Margo Petitti. Based in Fall River, Massachusetts, she designs and creates scarves and pocket squares.
How do you mix patterns in your scarves and pocket squares?
Margo Petitti: I of course take color and pattern into account when selecting fabric combinations, but also texture, weight, and fiber content. It’s important to keep like-weights and similar fibers together. When I design, sometimes I like to make something so bright and high contrast just to see it, and other times I keep the combinations more monochromatic or tonal and focus more on texture and finish.
What inspired you to make scarves and pocket squares?
MP: I was in graduate school when I started, and was introduced to a friend that has a men’s shop in Providence. He taught me about the suiting fabrics that he carried and gave me a swatch book of jacketing fabrics that he was discontinuing. I cut out the swatches and made a patchwork scarf for my dad for Christmas. I decided to withdraw from the graduate program over winter break and launched the company three months later. I started with scarves, and the pocket squares were a natural progression.
How does fashion inspire and inform your work?
MP: I’m actually much more inspired by the textiles themselves than with fashion. It’s difficult to not be inspired when working with such beautiful fabrics and classic patterns.
Do you have a favorite American artist? If yes, who, and why?
MP: I have always admired American fashion designers like, Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, and Ralph Lauren for their timeless looks. One painter that I’ve always liked is Thomas Mcknight. My parents have a few of his prints and when I was little I always loved them because of their color. They have one with a skinny moon that I particularly like.
Did you know that the Founder Duncan Phillips and his wife Marjorie had a painting studio in the upstairs of their house? Director Dorothy Kosinski explains how Phillips’s lifestyle and exceptional support of contemporaries like Arthur Dove, Ernest Lawson, and Rockwell Kent “shows the intensity of that relationship with the artist, the living artist, the practitioner. That’s obviously what made Duncan Phillips the happiest, the most engaged.”
