Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria (13th November 2024–9th March 2025)

When the Backhausen company closed in 2023, more than seventeen decades after its founding in 1849, the Austrian textile manufacturer left behind an archive that charts both changing European tastes and the shifting profession of textile design. Eleven thousand entries include carpets, upholstery fabrics, and curtains from the ornate style of historicism prevalent in the late 1800s, through the influential
turn-of-the-century Vienna Secessionists, and into the interwar years of art deco. Now on permanent loan to the Leopold Museum in Vienna, the remarkable collection includes graphic designs by over three hundred designers, as well as swatches, sample books, and collection catalogues...