Crypton and Designtex Celebrate 25-Year Partnership With 5 Artful New Fabrics
It was 1993 when Crypton co-founder Randy Rubin and Designtex president Susan Lyons met. A collaboration on a game-changing line of high-performance contract textiles soon followed. “Designtex was the first to take a chance on our idea,” Rubin recalls. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the partnership, Designtex unveils 5×5, a collection of five fabrics by five artists. Each artist’s work is transformed into Crypton’s stain-, moisture-, and odor-resistant polyester using a groundbreaking digital printing process that ensures striking color and clarity. “The technology has really evolved,” Lyons says. So has the bottom line: Both brands are donating a portion of proceeds to the nonprofit RxArt, which commissions contemporary artists to enliven children’s health-care facilities.
Designer: Kapitza
Product: CrissCross
Standout: Graphic designer sisters Nicole and Petra Kapitza explore the optics of geometry and color with psychedelic interpretations of lattice and chevron motifs.
Designer: Arturo Guerrero
Product: Line Variations
Standout: Linear patterning dissolves into overlapping color fields, revealing the architect-turned-painter’s predilection for thick brushstrokes and layered compositions.
Designer: Ellie Malin
Product: Five Cities
Standout: The printmaker’s geometric landscapes find a fitting vehicle in fiber, as tonal planes and cutout shapes float above the ground in playful compositions.
Designer: Phillip David Stearns
Product: BitDrift
Standout: Revisiting his sci-tech background, the textile weaver isolated parts of a photograph and shuffled the pixels algorithmically for an ordered yet organic pattern.
Designer: Elizabeth Atterbury
Product: Social Dance
Standout: The collage is adapted from the multimedia artist’s Calligraphy monotypes, in which copper sheets are cut into abstract glyphs and embossed on a press.
