What does a turn-of-the-century museum founder have to do with a Pollack fabric collection? The company has unveiled its latest debut, Undaunted, a textile collection inspired by Florence Dibell Bartlett, founder of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who collected textiles throughout the world. She opened the world’s first international folk art museum in 1953, hewing to her philosophy: “The art of the craftsman is a bond between the peoples of the world.”

From left: Florence Dibell Bartlett; Bartlett with the museum director (seated) and the French Consul, inspecting a gift to the museum; photo by Ernest Johanson, courtesy Pollack

The 11-fabric Undaunted collection is part of the larger Folklore line. Pollack’s team was struck by, among other factors, Bartlett's moxie–“A fearless and independent woman at the turn of the century, defied all gender norms to begin a world journey collecting textiles crafted by artisans from across the globe.”

Pollack's Folklore fabric, from the Undaunted collection; courtesy Pollack

Explains the brand, “The Undaunted group was conceived when Pollack Studio’s designers became inspired both visually by the museum’s textile and ethnographic dress collections, and personally by the spirit in which the museum was created and its collections amassed. In addition, the studio designers were drawn to a common visual connection among the museum’s documents. They chose their inspiration, and guided their interpretations, based on a theme of stitches and structure: a theme exemplified in the grid-like foundation and its resulting graphic geometry that underpins hand-stitching and handweaving spanning countries and centuries.”

Among the highlights of Undaunted, which “reimagines rather than replicates” the original works, as the brand explains, are Fine China, a simple horizontal and vertical pattern that draws on a cross-stiched hanging bed valance originally from China, which had inspired the brand’s other patterns, Mandarin and Mandarin Sheer; Folklore, inspired by a Hungarian textile found in the museum, which uses a thick cotton cord embroidered on fine linen with a “slightly Swedish” sense; and Loomstate, drawing its influence from a Turkish cradle cloth from circa 1910.

Proceeds of the sales of the patterns will benefit the Museum of International Folk Art.