The bed is often the largest piece of furniture and the focal point of the bedroom. Although the need for comfortable, breathable, soft bedding never changes, the design of the sheets and duvet at the center of the room can change with your style and mood. That is why, when it came time for Down Etc to design its Sheet Collection, we wanted to offer a variety of options to satisfy a variety of styles, from formal to whimsical. Our first choice to create that variety was textile designer Marcia Brandwein who developed the designs for our Tuxedo and Masquerade sheet sets.
This paisley white-on-white jacquard is sensual, sophisticated, and elegant, which is why we named it Tuxedo.
The Masquerade jacquard scalloped pattern is simple, poetic, and ever so whimsical.
Marcia’s love for drawing began in her early days spent studying at Pratt Institute in New York, on weekends while in high school and then as a college student. Long after graduating with a BFA in Illustration, she attended her one and only textile design class to learn how to create a repeat (a necessity in textile design) and fell totally in love with textiles from that moment on. Her career took her to many countries and cities where she worked with people from all cultures including China, Portugal, Italy, Peru, India, France, England, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and Israel. She regularly attended design shows in Paris, New York, and Germany to preview and to be inspired by the future of color and design.
Designing textiles for her has always been very specific to the end product, customer, or project. Marcia firmly believes this information is critical as it affects the choice of design and color. Since all her designing was for home textiles, she always felt her approach should be to dress the bed as if it were clothing. She believes the designs were successful in the hotel industry as they were not institutional looking.
Marcia started off working in cotton and woven matelassés and then moved to cotton sateen. She launched the luxury brand of sheeting produced in Israel as “Royal Sateen,” which became the first collection to use reactive printing on sateen fabric leaving the fabric silky and soft after printing. The product line was sold originally to department stores and specialty shops and then to boutique hotels. It included duvets, coordinate sheeting, and accessories including silk quilts, embroidered pillows, and alpaca throws.
Marcia is now hard at work as a fine artist, having returned to her love of painting. The influence of textile design is visible in the paintings and pastels included in her “Land, Sky, and Sea” Collection. Maine’s constantly changing landscape can never be captured in its entirety, providing Marcia with endless inspiration for her work. The “Land” pastels and paintings include images of the woods outside her window and the shadows cast by the trees in changing light and through passing seasons. She captures the drama of changing seasons in her “Sky” series and renders in tangible form the moment of water crashing against the rocky coast of Pemaquid (Bristol), Maine, in her “Sea” series.
Whether painting or designing textiles, Marcia begins the process with a drawing to define her space. This was true of her approach to Masquerade and Tuxedo. While you can only imagine stepping into one of the landscapes captured in her paintings and pastels, you can enjoy climbing into your bed covered in her Masquerade and Tuxedo sheet sets and duvets every night.
Updated Links July 29, 2022
