Women’s Weekly, April 2008
Kaffe Fassett is one of the most influential living textile artists and the best selling author of knitting, mosaic and patchwork titles. He has hosted his own TV series, Glorious Colour, and was the first living textile artist to have a one man show at London’s V&A. His extraordinary passion and insatiable appetite for colour is apparent whatever medium he uses, whether he is painting, knitting, creating patchwork, needlepoint or mosaics, Kaffe perceives all his work in the same way – as the opportunity to play with colours and patterns.
Hailing from sunny California, he began his training as a fine artist in Boston, before moving to London to paint in the mid sixties. His first venture into textiles was knitting. On a trip to a Scottish woollen mill with celebrated fashion designer of the time, Bill Gibb, Kaffe was inspired by the colours in the landscape and, finding the same colours at the mill in Shetland wool, he bought some yarn and knitting needles. A passenger on the train back to London taught him how to knit and the rest is history!
His first design had the ultimate accolade of appearing in Vogue. Within a short time, Missoni was commissioning his commercial collections and celebrities were clamouring for his one-off creations.
Over the years, his talents have diversified but not diluted. His vibrant and characteristic designs look fabulous whether they’re stitched in needlepoint on canvas, pieced together in patchwork as quilts, or as designs in mosaics.
For many Years, Kaffe has worked closely with Rowan Yarns in Yorkshire to produce designer patterns to inspire hand-knitters.
A major part of his output is now an expanding range of fabric prints for the patchwork markets.
Each design and colourway in the fabric range is a delight. You only have to look at a small selection of his patchwork designs, shown here, to be stunned by their vivacity and profusion of pattern. But if you examine them you’ll only find simple arrangements of squares, diamonds and triangles – it’s the colour that brings them alive.
With a diary that’s full of books to write, lecture tours involving slide talks and workshops on colour in design, which take him all over the world, Kaffe’s thirst for creative inspiration is never-ending.