The Blockhouse of Boston
also: Blockhouse
The Blockhouse of Boston was an art and design cooperative founded in 1947 by twelve students and recent alumni of the Massachusetts College of Art. Led by Janet Doub Erickson and Paul Coombs, its members designed and hand-printed original textiles - draperies, wall hangings, table linens - specializing in linoleum blockprints and screen printing. Their bold modernist patterns drew on New England architecture and history alongside pre-Columbian, Asian, and Native American motifs. The co-op ran on shared chores and no salaries: designers kept seventy percent of each sale, and prices were set low to reach a wide public. Press coverage in Life, Vogue, and The New Yorker, and exhibitions at Harvard's Fogg Museum and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, carried the work far beyond craft circles before the Blockhouse closed in 1955.
Defining characteristics
- Hand-printed textiles: linoleum blockprints and silkscreens designed and produced by the same artists
- Bold, flat modernist patterning built for fabric repeats on draperies, wall hangings, and linens
- New England subject matter - Boston architecture, local history, vernacular buildings - turned into motif
- World-art borrowings: pre-Columbian, Chinese, Guatemalan, and Northwest Coast Indigenous forms reworked as pattern
- Craft aimed at everyday domestic use rather than the single gallery object
Key figures
- Janet Doub Erickson (1924-2021) — Founding partner and chief designer who created most of the cooperative's prints and later wrote the classic block-printing manuals
- Paul Coombs — Founding partner who handled the business side and also contributed original designs
Example works
- Quan-Yin — Janet Doub Erickson
- Totemotif — Janet Doub Erickson
Sources
- The Blockhouse of Boston - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Janet Doub Erickson - Wikipedia encyclopedia