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A Striking Juxtaposition: Hand-Woven Textiles in the United Nations

Conference Building Interiors

Article in The Journal of Modern Craft · May 2015

DOI: 10.1080/17496772.2015.1054716

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The Journal of
Modern Craft A Striking
Volume 8—Issue 2 ­Juxtaposition:
Hand-Woven Textiles
July 2015
pp. 181–193

in the United Nations

DOI:
10.1080/17496772.2015.1054716

Reprints available directly

from the publishers
Photocopying permitted by
license only
© 2015 Taylor & Francis
Conference Building
Interiors
Alexa Griffith Winton

Alexa Griffith Winton is an independent design historian

based in New York. Her research investigates theories of the
modern interior as well as the relationship between craft,
textiles and architecture in the mid-twentieth century. She
teaches in the interior design programs at both the Pratt
Institute and Parsons the New School for Design.

Abstract
This article considers the history and significance of
three major hand-woven textile projects commissioned
for the United Nations Conference Building, which
opened in 1952: the room dividing screens by Dorothy
Liebes for the Delegates Dining Room, the tapestry
curtain by Marianne Richter for the Economic and Social
Council Chamber, and the drapes by Paula Trock for the
Trusteeship Council Chamber. In each case, the textiles
played pivotal roles in these interiors. They provided
visual focus, softened glare, carved out private spaces
within exposed open plan interiors, and provided tactile
and visual richness within the building’s somewhat hard
surfaces. The work of Richter, Trock, and Liebes contrib-
uted a much-needed vocabulary of warmth, texture, and
humanity to United Nations complex. Caustic fire-
proofing materials damaged these textiles and changing
tastes minimized their significance within the building’s
historical narrative. This essay seeks to redress this lack
of knowledge about the works, expanding the history of
modernist architecture.

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
182 A Striking ­Juxtaposition Alexa Griffith Winton

Keywords: Modernist textiles, United United Nations Headquarters from 1950

Nations Headquarters, hand weaving,
interior design, Dorothy Liebes, Marianne
Richter, Paula Trock, International Style,
modernism, transparency, Sven Markelius,
Finn Juhl, modernist craft
The first objective of the human beings
who work in the United Nations is to
obtain Peace in the world, and to do this
the Public of the world must be able to
follow their deliberations. To this end, all
the rooms of the United Nations are as
open and as filled with sunlight as we pos-
sibly could make them.1
The dramatic and often chaotic story
of the design and construction of the
to 1952 in New York City is well known
within the history of modern architecture
and design for the alternately combative
and cooperative design processes of
the complex’s chief architects.2 Recent
scholarship, driven by the restoration of
the Conference Building and the redesign
of the interiors completed in 2013, has
shed more light on its history, but there
is still much research to be done on the
original textiles for the complex created
by prominent female designers in the early
1950s.3 This essay considers these textiles
and their significance within the three
main areas of the modernist complex
known as the Conference Building: the
Economic and Social Council Chamber,

Fig 1 Economic and Social Council Chamber with Marianne Richter’s tapestry fully extended across
the window wall of the East façade. Undated postcard, collection of the author.

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
Alexa Griffith Winton A Striking ­Juxtaposition 183

Fig 2 Marianne Richter tapestry in place in the Economic and Social Council Chamber of the United
Nations, circa 1952. Photographer unknown, from the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design’s
collections.

Fig 3 Marianne Richter, design sketch in watercolor on paper, United Nations Economic and Social
Council Chamber tapestry. Photograph by Matti Östling, from the Swedish Centre for Architecture and
Design’s collections.

designed by Sven Markelius and featuring
tapestry drapes by Marianne Richter
(Figures 1–4); the Trusteeship Council
Chamber, designed by Finn Juhl with hand-
woven drapes by Paula Trock (Figure 5);
and the Delegates Dining Room, whose
interior was supervised by Abel Sorensen,
and its room dividing screens designed by
Dorothy Liebes (Figures 6–8). Each of the
three spaces considered here uses textiles,

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
184 A Striking ­Juxtaposition Alexa Griffith Winton

Fig 4 Sample of Marianne Richter’s tapestry for the United Nations Economic and Social Council
Chamber, circa 1951. Photo: Skissernas Museum/Emma Krantz.

and specifically hand-woven textiles, in
dynamic ways, responding both to the
architectural boundaries of these rooms,
and to the limitations of the modernist
insistence on open plans and extensive
fenestration.
and then to a dusky plum color, and there
will be interspersed with fields of ­off-white,
stark white and cream. The weft will be
wool and linen and the warp is a yarn
that we get from a marine supply store—
strong and durable.4 (Marianne Richter)

Marianne Richter and the Economic
and Social Council Chamber
Right now I am making sketches with
watercolor on thin paper. The curtain will
sparkle with color. The background color is
a vivid red that shifts into yellowish-orange
The Conference Building was the last of
the three main United Nations buildings to
be completed, opening in autumn 1952. It
is the least prominent of the UN complex
buildings, set back behind the Secretariat
tower and rising only five stories, but it has
sweeping views of the East River. The three

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
Alexa Griffith Winton A Striking ­Juxtaposition 185

Fig 5 Maintenance workers servicing drapes by Paula Trock in the Trusteeship Council Chamber, 1959.
United Nations Photo.

main chambers, almost identical in size and
orientation and measuring approximately
48 × 25 meters, were each designed by
Scandinavian architects: Swedish modernist
architect Sven Markelius (also a member
of the Board of Design) designed the
Economic and Social Chamber; the young
Danish architect and furniture designer Finn
Juhl was in charge of the Trusteeship Council
Chamber; and the Norwegian architect
Arnstein Arneberg created the Security
Council chamber.
Perhaps the best-known example of
hand-woven textiles in the Conference
Building is Marianne Richter’s drapes for
the Economic and Social Council Chamber,

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
186 A Striking ­Juxtaposition
woven at Märta Måås-Fjetterström AB in
Båstad, Sweden (Figures 1–4). Markelius’
design for the Economic and Social Council
Chamber was rigorously modernist in
concept. It features a slatted wooden screen
that wraps around the perimeter of the
room, ending parallel to the window wall
facing the East River, framing the view for
both the members of the Council and the
visitors observing the proceedings. Richter’s
drapes are massive, measuring 22 × 7
meters, and were created using the Gobelins
tapestry technique, making them essentially
double-sided, because the window wall on
the east façade of the room would expose
the exterior facing side of the textile. The
design is abstract yet familiar, with four
wing-like shapes in cream symmetrically
placed across each of the two drapes. These
motifs are set against the bold background
of reds and oranges with accents of plum,
creating—as Richter desired—visually
sparkling effect.
The drapes comprised a significant
component of Sweden’s national gift to
the United Nations. They were celebrated
and publicized within Sweden, with the
National Museum exhibiting them prior
to their installation in New York. While the
passage of time and the ravages of chemical
fireproofing permanently transformed
Richter’s original textile, her preliminary
watercolor sketch for the drapes displays
the lively range of colors and shapes that
prompted Interiors to call them both
“poetic and humorous.”5 When fully
extended, the edges of the tapestry abutting
the north and south walls are concealed by
the curved and tapered edges of Markelius’
wooden screen, creating a continuous yet
visually varied boundary, melding soft and
The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
Alexa Griffith Winton
hard surfaces, saturated and neutral palettes,
in a harmonious expression.
The windows that span the east wall
of the chamber do, as Harrison desired,
allow extensive daylight to penetrate the
chamber, so much so that the glare impeded
the functioning of the chamber itself. There
was initially a secondary set of neutral,
translucent drapes of fiberglass and wool
designed by Astrid Sampe and produced
by the Nordiska Kompaniet, which were
intended for daytime use, with the tapestry
reserved for evening use.6 However, due to
both the persistent glare and desire to shield
activities in the Chamber for passers-by, the
Richter drapes were soon in constant use.
Despite the tremendous amount of
time, money, and attention lavished on
Richter’s tapestry, it had a relatively short
life within the Conference Building. Due to
New York City fire regulations, all textiles
at the United Nations were saturated
with flame-retarding chemicals. Even with
extensive efforts to conserve the fabric, this
treatment caused irreparable damage, and
by 1988, Richter’s tapestry was permanently
replaced by drapes of printed linen in Sven
Markelius’ Pythagoras pattern. As part of
the recent renovation of the Conference
Building, Sweden commissioned another
architectural-scale textile for the United
Nations, Dialogos, by artist Ann Edholm,
which was hand-woven at the HV Studio in
Stockholm in 2012.7
Paula Trock and the Trusteeship
Council Chamber
The Trusteeship Council Chamber was
designed by the Danish architect Finn Juhl.
Whereas Markelius’ palette of color and
material was highly restricted—excepting
Alexa Griffith Winton
the Richter tapestry—Juhl’s design concept
was quite colorful. He created a highly sculp-
tural wooden ceiling punctuated by brightly
painted wooden baffles, which he felt helped
to create a “solemn but also festive atmos-
phere.”8 Like Markelius, Juhl also paneled
his chamber in wood slats and curved the
edges of the north and south walls inward
to soften the angles and blur the boundary
of wall into textile framing the large window
wall facing the East River.
In contrast to the highly saturated colors
of Richter’s tapestry, Juhl and Trock chose
a very subtle palette for her hand-woven
drapes, supporting rather than competing
with Juhl’s colorful interior design (Figure 5).
As Juhl explained to the Planning Office, “As
I am using quite a lot of color in the ceiling
baffles and in covers for chairs, I would like
something neutral for this inner curtain.”9
It was a semi-transparent, loosely woven
textile, which allowed light to permeate
while mediating the problem of glare from
the large window wall. As weaver and writer
Lili Blumenau described in her review of
the textiles at the United Nations, “It is a
simple, good quality striped pattern with
two brown and two white warps, filled
throughout in plain weave of white wool.”10
As with the Economic and Social Council
Chamber, the persistent glare demanded
two layers of curtains. Trock’s textile faced
the delegates and observers, while a simple,
white fiberglass fabric was placed closest
to the window wall. An image from the
United Nations Photo Library (Figure 5)
depicts two workers on scaffolding hanging
Trock’s window covering, emphasizing
its architectural scale and its importance
to the overall interior. Juhl was a strong
supporter of Trock and her experimental
The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
A Striking ­Juxtaposition 187
approach to weaving, writing in a letter
of recommendation for Trock written on
August 29, 1951: “In the last few years Miss
Paula Trock has made so many interesting
experiments with woolen textiles that I,
as architect in charge of the Trusteeship
Council Chamber, have ordered the very
large curtains for this project from her.”11
Trock’s original textiles suffered, as did
Richter’s, from the aggressive flame-proofing
process. As part of the thorough restoration
of the Conference Building completed
in 2013, weaver Hanne Vedel, who had
purchased Trock’s weaving workshop,
Spindegården, in 1970, rewove the drapes
precisely to Trock’s original specifications.12
Dorothy Liebes and the Delegates
Dining Room
Because I believe strongly in the Unit-
ed Nations, it was gratifying to be asked
to weave some screens for that building.
They were eight feet high and used as
temporary walls to divide the main din-
ing room into four intimate rooms. We
designed them in the United Nations
colors, blue and white, the materials were
bamboo half-rounds shot through with
metal threads. My chief assistant Ralph
Higbee wove the dividers.13
As she describes above, the American textile
designer and weaver Dorothy Liebes was
commissioned to create an extensive series
of expandable screens for the Delegates
Dining Room, the formal restaurant on
the fourth floor, overlooking the East
River (Figures 6 and 7). The origins of this
commission remain unclear, with searches
188 A Striking ­Juxtaposition Alexa Griffith Winton

of the Liebes papers at the Archives of
American Art and the United Nations
Records Office revealing no clues. The
most extensive contemporary account of
the Liebes screens is Lili Blumenau’s article,
“Textiles in the United Nations Buildings,”14
in the Winter 1952–3 issue of Handweaver
& Craftsman, an invaluable resource which
also provides key information about the
Richter, Trock and Sampe textiles, as well
as a contemporary critique of the building

Fig 6 United Nations Delegates Dining Room with the moveable screens by Dorothy Liebes in the
expanded position, 1952. United Nations Photo.

Fig 7 United Nations Delegates Dining Room with the screens by Liebes collapsed, 1952. United
Nations Photo.

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
Alexa Griffith Winton A Striking ­Juxtaposition 189

Fig 8 Page from August 1952 House and Garden article on the interiors of the United Nations Conference Building.
In the bottom left is a color image of the Liebes’ screens for the Delegates Dining Room, while in the bottom right
is the fabric provided to the Economic and Social Council Chamber by Astrid Sampe. Image: Conde Nast Archive.

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
190 A Striking ­Juxtaposition
interiors from the perspective of a textile
designer.
Liebes was, at this point, one of the
best-known designers in the United
States, with a broad, national platform
from which she advocated for American
design, both craft- and industry-based.
Liebes, who often worked with prominent
architects and designers including Frank
Lloyd Wright, Edward Durrell Stone, and
Henry Dreyfuss, consistently positioned
her work in relation to its surrounding
architecture.15 She developed a formal
vocabulary that responded materially and
spatially to architectural context, often
combining natural and man-made materials
in unexpected ways and keying color
palettes carefully to interior features such as
paintings.
As Blumenau describes in her article, the
screens were conceived to provide privacy,
visual interest through texture and color, and
to frame the diners:
These are typical Liebes blinds, with heavy
slats painted in grayish blue, warped with
chenille, raw silk, and metallic.They are used
in the Conference Building to divide the
large dining room into compartments. The
slats hang lengthwise. The screens are on a
track and can be arranged as needed …
The design is comprised of six horizontal
stripes, no two alike in color and materi-
al. The widest stripe has been planned to
form background for diners seated. The
narrowest of the six stripes is at the top of
the screen.16
Blumenau describes further a rich palette
of chenilles in muted shades of blues, silks,
cream-colored cotton, and silver and copper
The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
Alexa Griffith Winton
cord. The blues woven throughout the
screens relate directly to the official “United
Nations blue,” a color intended to unify the
various UN interiors.
The screens were vertically flexible and
attached to a metal track, enabling them to
be pulled open to create up to four small,
private “rooms” within the open plan interior.
They could also be collapsed for large events
or other occasions requiring uninterrupted
floor space. According to Liebes and
Blumenau, they measured eight feet tall by
fifteen feet wide. At the upper register of
the screens, wide, horizontal bands of open
space facilitated a sense of openness and
provided visual connections to the larger
interior, while simultaneously maintaining
a sense of privacy. The flexible design also
allowed the light from the fully fenestrated
eastern façade to permeate the room
whether the screens were open or closed.
Archival images show the dining room in
both configurations (Figures 6 and 7).
While the river views provided visual
interest during daytime hours, at night the
light caught and refracted off the metallic
fibers interwoven throughout the screens,
creating a dynamic play of brilliant lights.
A review of the Conference Building
interiors in the August 1952 issue of
House and Garden (Figure 8) describes
the harmonious use of color and materials
within the Dining Room, suggesting a unified
interior that resisted monotony. “Screens
by Dorothy Liebes in the Delegates Dining
Room,” it reports, “repeat the colors of
blue banquettes, white metal chair legs,
and natural-colored linen curtains from
Belgium.”17 An accompanying spread shows
samples of the materials and textures
throughout the building, highlighting a
Alexa Griffith Winton
predominance of blues with neutrals and
wood in a variety of textures.
The history of these screens within
the United Nations Conference Building
is not known. They are prominent in
photographs of the Dining Room from
the mid-1950s, but the dining room was
completely remodeled in 1981 and there is
no indication of whether the screens were
still in place at that time. Given the fragility
of many of the natural materials Liebes used,
as well as the corrosive flame-retardant
chemicals the screens were subject to, it is
unlikely they survived long, especially when
routinely exposed to daylight, smoke, and
food within the dining room itself.
Conclusion
What we have here in striking juxtaposi-
tion is a revelation of the very meaning of
interior design, and a sudden insight into
its terrific psychological significance.18
The construction schedule of the
United Nations Headquarters was highly
compressed, and the budget put constant
pressure on its architects to eliminate
the unnecessary. It would have been far
more expedient and inexpensive for the
architects, planners, and interior designers
of the Conference Building to specify
power-loomed fabrics than to commission
the three textile projects discussed here. In
considering why such substantial resources
of time and capital were dedicated to hand-
woven textiles within this self-consciously
modernist complex, it is critical to consider
the visual and tactile contributions of
architectural textiles. As T’ai Smith has
shown, weaving was a critical component
The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
A Striking ­Juxtaposition 191
of Bauhaus architectural theory and
practice, and given the hard, often specular
surfaces of modernist buildings, hand-
woven fabrics contributed both visual and
tactile textures to otherwise potentially
sterile environments.19 Thus there is a
logical role for hand-woven fabrics to play
in the modernist interior, and this is not
the only example of a postwar modernist
building that gave privilege to hand-woven
fabrics. Leslie Martin, one of the designers
of the Festival Hall in London, for example,
commissioned the British weaver Hilary
Bourne to weave a stage curtain and other
textiles for the building’s opening in 1951,
as part of the Festival of Britain.20 Likewise,
Sandra Alfoldy has established the critical
role of collaboration between craft and
architecture within Canada’s modernist
architecture21. The significance afforded to
hand-woven textiles within the Conference
Building, then, was not a unique occurrence,
but part of a broader effort to unite craft
and modernist architecture, dating to the
early twentieth century.
Given the focus on transparency and
efficiency within the Conference Building’s
construction and programming, the textiles
discussed here made essential contributions
to the interior experience. These three
distinct approaches to textiles for the
interior provided visual focus, softened
glare, carved out private spaces within
exposed open plan interiors, and provided
subtle reminders of the human hand
within the building’s somewhat hard and
rational surfaces. The work of Richter, Trock,
and Liebes contributed a much-needed
vocabulary of warmth, texture, and humanity
to United Nations complex in which so
192 A Striking ­Juxtaposition
much hope for peace and diplomacy had
been placed.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Hanne Vedel,
Bronwyn Griffith, the staff of the United Nations
Photo Library, the Swedish Center for Architecture
and Design in Stockholm, and the Skissernas Muse-
um in Lund for their assistance in preparing this essay.
Notes
1 
Wallace K. Harrison, “Philosophy of Design,” in
Your United Nations (New York: United Nations
Department of Public Information, 1952), p. 9.
2 
For more on the Board of Design’s internal
debates about the façade of the United Nations
Secretariat, see Victoria Newhouse, Wallace K.
Harrison, Architect (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), pp.
127–9. Following a competition, the Headquar-
ters buildings were designed collaboratively
by the Board of Design, whose ten members
included Le Corbusier (France), Sven Markelius
(Sweden), Wallace K. Harrison (United States),
Oscar Niemayer (Brazil), among other promi-
nent architects. The project was led by Harrison,
with the planning for the interiors coordinated
by the Danish-born architect Abel Sorensen.
The three main buildings are the Secretariat, the
Conference Building, and the General Assembly
Building. They are constructed on 18 acres of
land on the eastern-most edge of Manhattan,
donated by the Rockefeller family, between
1950 and 1952.
3 
Regarding the redesign of the interior of the
North Delegates’ Lounge, led by the designer
Hella Jongerius, see the interview with Sarah
Lichtman in this issue.
4 
About her design, Richter further reported,
“We have named the composition ‘Mussel
Red’. That may sound strange but it is because
my first draft was with a mussel motif. I kept
the idea, but I shifted to red. At the Märta
Måås-Fjetterström workshop in Båstad we are
currently building an enormous loom—obvi-
ously, the curtain cannot be woven on one of
The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
Alexa Griffith Winton
the regular 40 looms. Wåhlstedts in Dalarna is
preparing to spin and dye the yarn and
Klippans wool mill will also participate.”
Marianne Richter, “Färgskrakande jättedraperi
för FN vävs I Båstad,” Translated to the English
by Bronwyn Griffith. Aftonbladet, July 30, 1951.
5  Interiors, “An Unodious Comparison: the Three
Council Chambers of the United Nations,” in
Interiors (July 1952), p. 46.
6  Lili Blumenau, “Textiles in the United Nations
Buildings,” in Handweaver & Craftsman (Winter
1952–3), p. 11.
7  See Margareta Bergstrand, Lars Byström, Mag-
dalena Malm, Tom Sandqvist, Carl Magnus Eriks-
son, and Henric Råsbrant, Sweden in the United
Nations: Dialogos by Ann Edholm (Stockholm:
Ministry for Public Affairs of Sweden, 2013). For
more on the conservation issues related to the
fire-proofing of textiles at the United Nations,
see Lisa Nilson, “Sustainable Textile Art? An
Investigation into Flame Retardants,” accessed
January 25, 2015, https://www.iiconservation.
org/node/3704
8  Karsten Ifversen and Birgit Lyngbye Ped-
ersen, Finn Juhl at the UN—A Living Legacy
­(Copenhagen: Strandberg Publishing, 2013),
p. 80.
9  Glambek, 32.
10  Blumenau, p. 12. See also Nona Jean Nelson, “The
Influence of Swedish, Finnish, and Danish Textiles
on Contemporary American Fabrics,” p. 77.
11 Translation of a letter of recommendation written
by Finn Juhl on behalf of Paula Trock, provided by
Hanne Vedel in an email communication with the
author on February 20, 2015. The original letter is
contained in the Paula Trock archives at Spinde-
gården and courtesy of Mrs. Vedel.
12 See Glambek, p. 32.
13 Dorothy Liebes, unpublished autobiography, p.
420. Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of Ameri-
can Art, box 10, folders 3 and 4.
14 Blumenau, “Textiles in the United Nations Build-
ings,” pp. 10–4.
15 See Winton, “Color and Personality: Dorothy
Liebes and Midcentury American Design,”
­Archives of American Art Journal 2010 (48), pp.
1–2.
Alexa Griffith Winton
16 Lili Blumenau, “Textiles in the United Nations
Buildings,” p. 11.
17 “ Inside the UN: A preview of what you will
see when its doors open to the public,” in
House and Garden (August 1952), p. 48.
18 “An Unodious Comparison: the Three Council
Chambers of the United Nations,” in Interiors
(July 1952), pp. 46–67.
The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 8—Issue 2—July 2015, pp. 181–193
View publication stats
A Striking ­Juxtaposition 193
19 S ee T’ai Smith, Bauhaus Weaving Theor y:
From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2014).
20 Hilary Bourne, Spinning the Thread (Ditchling:
The Lucy Bruno Press, 1999), pp. 31–2.
21 Sandra Alfoldy, The Applied Arts: Architecture
and Craft in Post-War Canada (Montreal: McGill