Designer profile: Suzanne Tick

As a design historian I try to subjectively analyze what is important in design, but I know that only time and hindsight will reveal which designers made the greatest contribution to the field. Suzanne Tick, however, is one of my picks as a future design giant; someone whom my grandchildren will ask me "Did you ever meet her?!" Named by Metropolitan Home magazine as one of twenty-one noteworthy designers to watch in the 21st century, she is a powerful force in the contract design materials market. However, I believe that the massive scope and ingenuity of her work has been largely unchampioned.

Today we often overlook the important contribution of textile designers. The reason for this is complex. First, as J. Mays, the Design Director at Ford, would explain, "A lot of design innovation involves technical innovation, and most people do not care about technical innovation; they want to buy a good story, something that makes them feel good." Textiles, especially contract textiles, are technical and generally do not make for a racy story. Secondly, textiles have long been considered "soft" design or women's work; inferior to the majesty of architecture. And the final reason is that women designers often do not promote themselves like their male counterparts.

Suzanne Tick is a prolific, creative and versatile designer who wants to challenge the accepted norms of textile design. There are few textile designers in this industry today whose expertise, like Suzanne's, crosses the line between commercial and residential fabrics, commercial and residential carpeting, area rugs and building materials. A formal weaving education* has given her great technical strength to understand just what can be done with the weaving process in all its various forms, giving her a base from which she often pushes past the standard norms. Unlike many textile designers, Suzanne is not simply a stylist who picks textile patterns and colors, but rather, she engineers fabric constructions through development of new fibers and yarns, often going to other industries for sources and ideas. Her approach is more like that of a traditional industrial designer than a textile designer.

Since January 1997, through her consulting and design firm Suzanne Tick, Inc., she has been the Creative Director for KnollTextiles, where she is responsible for the direction, management and much of the product design for this large commercial fabric company. In her continuing exploration of new materials, Suzanne invented a new breed of hard surfacing for KnollTextiles in 2000 called Imago. This was the first time fabric was ever combined with a high performance resin, effectively extending the range of textiles into the building materials market.

On the carpet side, Suzanne and partner Terry Mowers, formed the award winning Tuva Looms in 1996 specializing in sophisticated woven carpet for the architectural and design community. Suzanne is also working with Interface, Inc. with their Bentley and Prince Street brands. Her collection of hand-knotted silk and wool blend area rugs for Tufenkian are currently being marketed as are a collection of machine made area rugs from Prince Street that are sold through the Design Within Reach catalogue.

Over the years, Suzanne has been the design director for several high profile contract fabric companies including Boris Kroll, Brickel Associates and Unika Vaev. In 1997 she was hired by Groundworks, a division of Lee Jofa, to develop a collection of residential drapery, upholstery and wall covering called Collection Renew.

Suzanne has received numerous awards and participated in several museum exhibitions with her work. Three of her designs for KnollTextiles and Groundworks were included in the 2002 exhibition at the Denver Art Museum called "US design from 1975-2000" which will be touring around the country. One of her experimental woven projects, which used an industrial steel fiber from Japan, was included in the show at the Museum of Modern Art called "Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles."

Last year she was nominated to be a Fashion Group International Rising Star finalist in the interiors' category. Her work for Tuva Looms and KnollTextiles has frequently won awards from I.D. magazine, including a Design Distinction award this year for Nimbus, a KnollTextile drapery fabric and Ozone, the related Imago product. She has also won IIDA and best of Neocon awards for fabric and carpeting and recognition from the Chicago Athenaeum in their Good Design Award Program.