4244
Austrian Needlepoint Embroidery
Circa 1920
Size 57" x 50"
Size 145 x 130cm
Ida Jolles Nov 23/1899 July 26/1990
Ida Jolles of Vienna, founder and head of a petit point factory employing 20,000 persons, arrived in New York yesterday aboard the liner George Washington. In March Mme. Jolles, who is celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of her start in the business world, was decorated with the Cross of Honor by the Austrian Government, for having commercialized a native art. "In days gone by," she explained yesterday, in her suite at the Park Lane Hotel, "only the aristocrats were taught petit point, and it was not for sale. Fifteen years ago I was offered $200 by an American for a chair I had covered in this type of tapestry. Seeing the possibilities, I assembled a force and went into it commercially." At present, she said, petit point as an industry ranks second only to munitions in Austria
