Blockhouse Bay’s Handweaver Fabric Artist
Ilse von Randow
Alexander Turnbull Library
After having the pleasure of hearing at our April meeting, Tyl von Randow’s talk on his childhood in Shanghai during WW2, this is the story of his Mother’s fame here in Auckland as an artist and contemporary designer of hand woven fabrics.
After the communists came to Shanghai, Ilse von Randow and her two sons, in April 1952, through refugee status, settled in Auckland. When Ilse was living in Shanghai she had designed woven fabrics for textile companies, and when settled here, over the next fourteen years, she became a central figure in the establishment of modernist craft weaving in New Zealand.
