Vera: The Art and Life of an Icon

Being that it is women's history month, I thought it might be fun to highlight a woman who has made a profound impact in the art and design world--Vera Neumann.

Vera is best known for her vibrant silk scarves. Interestingly enough, she first started out making silkscreened placemats in her small kitchen but with the shortage of cotton during WW1, was inspired by excess silk parachute fabric to create her famous scarves. She created a prolific amount of work during her lifetime (over 20,000 scarves!) and her work is avidly collected. With a little luck you can find Vera's scarves for a few dollars at thrift stores and Goodwills across the country. Just look for her trademark lucky ladybug!

crafty cook ups

This post is rather timely as Anthropologie has just begun selling a new book chronicling Vera's life and artwork. This one will definitely be making its way to my bookshelf!

Anthropologie

Anthropologie

Anthropologie

Last summer Anthropologie hosted an exhibition highlighting Vera's work. You can check out Design*Sponge's re-cap of the event here. In honor of Vera, Anthropologie debuted a collection of homegoods and clothing inspired by some of her original artwork. Here's a collage Design*Sponge put together. Aren't the pieces beautiful? I'm sad I missed some of them!

Design*Sponge

Vera was a wildly talented and creative woman who still serves as inspiration for many today. I've been hunting for the perfect Vera scarves to make into pillows, but with so many prints to choose from it's proved to be a bit of a challenge! I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about Vera Neumann, if you'd like to read more head on over to the Vera Company website.