Margaret Leischner

Margarete Leischner was born in Bischofswerda on 15 April 1907. After attending the Academy of Applied Arts in Dresden, she enrolled at the Bauhaus for the winter semester of 1927. She attended the preliminary course under Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy, studied with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Joost Schmidt, and entered the weaving workshop in the summer semester of 1929. During a semester of leave, she attended a two-month training programme at the Höhere Fachschule für Färberei (Higher technical school for dyeing) in Krefeld. From 1930 to 1931, she assisted the head of the Bauhaus weaving workshop, Gunta Stölzl, and was in charge of the dyeworks. She passed her apprenticeship certification exam at the weavers’ guild of Glauchau in 1930 and completed her studies with a Bauhaus Diploma a year later. During her studies, she already evinced a keen interest in the industrial mass production of bulk goods and the changing requirements of modern fabrics and experimented with wholly innovative materials. Her fabric design Leno is pictured on the cover of the second issue of the magazine Bauhaus, published in 1931.
Over the next two years, she worked as a designer for the Weberei Hablik-Lindemann in Itzehoe and the Deutsche Werkstätten in Dresden. From 1932 to 1936 she also taught fabric design at the Textil und Modeschule der Stadt Berlin (Textile and fashion school, Berlin). She passed her master’s examination at the Chamber of Crafts in Berlin in 1936.
Margarete Leischner emigrated to England in 1938 and subsequently called herself Margaret. She quickly established herself as a textile designer and teacher and focused more intently than most of the other Bauhaus weavers on collaborating with industry. She worked for the upholstery fabric manufacturer Team Valley Weaving Industries in Gateshead until 1942, creating new designs and helping to build up the company. From 1944 to 1950 she designed and developed new yarns at R. Greg and Co. in Stockport and plastic covers for car seats at Fothergill and Harvey. From 1948 to 1963, Leischner was a senior lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London and head of its weaving department. In the 1950s and 1960s she worked as a designer and consultant for diverse British firms. She created the furnishing design “Checkmate“ for the airline BOAC, advised Guy Rodgers of Liverpool, the manufacturer of Harris and Donegal tweeds, on the design of furnishing fabrics, devised the highly successful hard-wearing sisal carpet range “Tintawn“ for Irish Ropes Ltd. and developed acrylic fibres for Chemstrand Ltd. In 1955, she also travelled to Kashmir to advise on improvements for the region’s handloom industry.
Leischner was a founding member of the Textile Group of the Society of Industrial Artists and was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts shortly before to her death on 18 May 1970. [IS 2021]