“Kate” was honored to take part in ambitious restoration project of historical curtains and door drapes for Ambassadors Accreditation Hall at the Riga castle.
The work began with "Kate" textile department head and designer Kristīne Vēja, together with the textile artist Māris Maniņš, adapting the pattern of the fabric to be reconstructed to the historical curtain rods and the proportions of the room. Once the fabrics had been woven by hand, "Kate" arranged for them to be made up with a specially matched lining and with decorative fabric bands that were woven separately. As part of the project, "Kate" also supplied and installed the sheer window curtains and the curtain rods. The fabrics for the sheer curtains and the lining were selected from the collection of the Swiss manufacturer "Creation Baumann".
Below is an extract from Marta Šuste's article "Rīgas pils Sūtņu zāle" in the journal "Latvijas architektūra", issue no. 129, February/March 2017.
"The Ambassadors Accreditation Hall at Riga Castle, designed by the Latvian applied arts master Ansis Cīrulis (1883-1942), is included in the Latvian Culture Canon as a masterpiece of design history. This example of Latvian art deco, unique in a global context, has now been reborn following the restoration of the castle and can be seen by visitors in its full splendour. A singular piece of work has been done, showing the hall once again in all its splendour.
Cīrulis developed the design for the entire room: the ceiling and wall paintings, the furniture and the textiles - the carpet, the upholstery fabrics, the curtains - as well as the light fittings. |…|
As part of the restoration project|…| the curtain and door textiles were also restored.|…|
Both the graphic and the colour reconstruction of the hall's textile patterns was the work of the interior designers Ināra Cine and Guntars Jansons.|…|
Latvian craftspeople were sought to make the historical curtains and door drapes. The textile artist Māris Maniņš worked on their restoration, reconstructing the original curtain patterns from photographs. The pelmets and curtains of the two windows and the pelmets and drapes of the three doors incorporate the ornament favoured by Cīrulis, derived from Latvian ethnography and set on a basis of art deco motifs.
The curtain fabrics, matched to the other textiles in the hall, were made in 2016 in collaboration with a team of Latvian weavers and woven to a drawn-in pattern.|…|
A sample of Cīrulis's curtain fabric found at the DMDM helped in choosing the structure of the fabric. Nothing of the curtains themselves had survived.|…|"
