How Vera Neumann's Scarves Came To Be

In the early 1940s shortly after they married, Vera Neumann's husband George encouraged her to transfer her artwork to fabric with the idea of using the fabric for home decor.  Together they built their first silk screen that was so small it fit on the top of their dining room table.  This led to the launching of a small printing company which they named Printex.  Table napkins and placemats were small items that were easily produced on the small silk screen.  Since they transferred the designs from Vera's original paintings with her signature on them, that's how her signed textiles began.

The war effort dried up easy access to the linen and cotton fabric that they used and during one of Vera's searches, she found excess parachute silk in an Army surplus store.  This parachute silk became her new canvas and her silk scarf business was born.  Once again her signed artwork was used for the scarf designs and this was the beginning of the 'signature' scarf.

Her first scarf was sold to Lord & Taylor in 1947.  The first designs were simple and monochromatic.  Many of the scarves featured allover designs of a single object.  One of Vera's favorite motifs was botanicals; leaves, ferns, and other flora that captivated her imagination as a child.

Her earliest scarves were also smaller, almost handkerchief sized, than her later scarves as they were still using a small screen print.

Having a love for estate sales, I've managed to collect several of her earlier scarves.  The green scarf with the leaf design is one of her earliest, I believe, which may date from the late 40s to early 50s.  The scarf doesn't have the handrolled hem that her Japanese scarves do.  Instead the fabric has stitching almost like a satin stitch around the edges of the scarf.  The attached tag also says the scarf is designed and handscreened in USA.  

No matter what the subject matter, I love Vera scarves!  I'm happy that they're still easy to find...and collect.

  

Thinking About Scarves

The heyday of my wearing scarves was during the 70s and 80s. I bought an Echo scarf from Suzanne's Boutique in Myrtle Square Mall, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in the mid-70s and wore it to shreds. Literally.

Let me digress for a moment.

The south was a place of hair curlers (hair rollers, if you will), Saturday evening 'sets' at the beauty shop that would be worn all week, and LOTS of hair spray. We also prided ourselves on long zippers down the backs of our polyester minidresses. They were so easy to step into and one wouldn't get one's hair mussed. That was a big no-no. Looking at some of the cast iron 'dos from the 70s, I was hard pressed to determine how a woman could keep her hair from being mussed during, ahem, shall we say, the joys of marital bliss. I mean, the hair, mounds of it piled on top on one's head, didn't move. That was always a conundrum. If one was unlucky enough to have a pull-on article of clothing, where one had to gasp! Pull it over one's head, that was a problem waiting to be solved.

Enter the silk scarf.

The scarf had to be finely woven silk, not twill; it had to be slick. One would gently drape the scarf over one's head and catch the corners under the chin. Manuvering and blinded by the scarf, one would gently slide the garment over one's head and quickly whisk the scarf away. Voila! Successful dressing without mussing the hair.

Back to my point.

This is how I wore out the Echo scarf. After wearing it around the collars of countless blouses, it was regulated to its greatest cause: that of keeping my hair from getting mussed. It was a lovely scarf, colorful with flowers and paisleys on a creamy background. It was also expensive; the most expensive scarf I ever bought retail. It lived a good life until one day I took a critical look at it and laid it to rest in my vanity trashcan. To this day I use its successor, a nondescript silk scarf purchased from the low rent district of Belks department store back in the day when it had a bargain area. It's held together much better than the lovely Echo scarf, perhaps because of its peasant roots in NOT having a logo. I don't slip too many things over my head anymore, but the scarf is lovingly folded in my top drawer, a place of honor and duty when called upon.

My earliest scarf recollection is a chiffon kerchief tied around my older sister's ponytail. She had dark auburn hair and wore her hair in a ponytail along with rolled up dungarees and white poodle socks that she twisted around her ankles. There was always a brilliant scarf in her hair. She must have had dozens of those filmy chiffon squares. They were small, maybe 12 inches square and were like a breath on a breeze. There were also times when she folded one on the diagonal and tied it around her neck with a sweater set. In my little girl's 5-year-old mind, she looked like a movie star to me.

Years later when Mama and I were cleaning out her attic, we ran across those scarves, mottled and stiff with age. We were in a cleaning frenzy, and they didn't survive our scourge, but they remain in my memories, bright, young, and happy.