MARGUERITA MERGENTIME
Marguerita Mergentime (née Straus) was born in New York City in 1894. Largely self-taught, her development as a textile designer was spurred by a gap she saw in the market for well designed, modern table linens. To augment her training, she took art classes at Teachers College and frequented the Museum of Modern Art to immerse herself in the museum’s fabric and antique collections. Working in the heady milieu of 1930s New York, Mergentime became known for strikingly new printed linens, making her mark with tablecloths that enlivened dining with color, humor, and entertainment. She collaborated with some of the best-known designers of her time, among them Donald Deskey, Russel Wright and Gilbert Rohde.
Mergentime was a member of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC), alongside other influential designers whose work has come to define American modernism in the 20th century. In 1932, Donald Deskey, then the lead designer of Radio City Music Hall, invited Mergentime to decorate the theater. For the Grand Lounge carpet, she created drawings of performers overlaid on an abstract background; her fabric design titled "Lilies in the Air," adorned the Ladies’ Lounge.
Best known for her printed fabrics, Mergentime mastered an array of visual themes and styles, ranging from geometric abstracts to iconic florals and figurative works. Starting in 1934, Mergentime designed table linens for Macy’s and Lord & Taylor in New York City, as well as other department stores around the country. She drew inspiration from folk art Americana and the political landscape, injecting humor throughout her work in typographic statements. “Signals” and “Shapes and Colors,” her series of minimalist napkins and linens from the mid-1930s represents her earlier style and foreshadows motifs to come. Mergentime’s table linens reflected a thoughtful engagement with the hostesses who might use her creations, pairing bold colors and patterns with conversation starters. The 1939 tablecloth “Food Quiz” includes the printed phrase: “Do you dish the dirt before you dish the soup?”
In 1939 Mergentime designed a souvenir tablecloth for the New York World’s Fair, and a hanging titled “Americana” for the Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, that lists 360 words, phrases, and names taken from both historical references and the vernacular speech and popular culture of the day.
In 1941, Mergentime was diagnosed with leukemia and died soon after at the age of 47. That her work still bears relevance today is a testament to her sense of design and love of language. Throughout her career, and after her death, her work was featured in The New Yorker, House & Garden, House Beautiful, and Vogue, as well as newspapers across America. Her work resides in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art; the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum at FIT; and the Allentown Art Museum.
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