Barbara beckmann biography
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Fabric collection of famed textile designer to be sold in Sonoma
The final inventory of groundbreaking textile designer Barbara Beckmann, who died in 2018, will be offered for sale online and in person bygd her friend and colleague, designer and bedding entrepreneur Heather Kearsley Wolf.
The approximately 300 bolts of fabric offered in the April 20 to 24 sale is an opportunity for interior designers and the public to acquire pieces of Beckmann’s oeuvre, which has been featured in the interiors of palaces, planes, yachts, embassies, the White House and other properties.
Born in 1939 and raised in Chicago, Beckmann became a leader in the textile design and production business worldwide, says Kearlsey. Her hand-painted fabrics were featured at the Brooklyn Museum along with Richard Avedon and Elaine de Kooning. Beckmann was also an early proponent of using environmentally friendly all-natural fibers and non-toxic agents.
Beckmann lived in The Ranch in Sonoma and later in Sonoma Gree
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The first female graduate of the University of Mississippi School of Engineering committed a $5 million estate gift to her alma mater for Giving Day 2024, and plans call for the Department of Chemical Engineering to bear her name in honor of the legacy gift.
Barbara Kerr Beckmann of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who serves as a senior economic adviser for ExxonMobil focusing on planning and optimization, has always been a trailblazer. The career of the company’s first female engineer has spanned 63 years – longer than any other company employee.
“Engineering is about problem-solving, which is one of my major interests,” said Beckmann, a native of Arkansas. “I considered going into medicine, but after an assessment, my high school guidance counselor said I did not have the personality for it. My fascination with math and science led to my decision to study engineering.
“My Ole Miss degree is the foundation that provided for my successful career. I committed this gift because I felt Ol
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Heather Kearsley Wolf spent more than three years cataloging the remaining works of the late Barbara Beckmann, the pioneering fabric designer whose work hangs in the White House and embassies and luxury hotels around the world. Through hard work and perseverance, she finally had the hundreds of bolts organized, priced and ready to sell. Ten days later, the building she was storing it all in burned to the ground.
It’s been over a month since the fire, and Kearsley Wolf, a Bay Area–based interior designer and the founder of bespoke linen company Kearsley, has had time to process the whole ordeal. While the loss of Beckmann’s final designs (“works of art, really,” she says) is devastating, she is grateful for the opportunity to speak more about the fabric designer’s legacy.
Though only a trace of her work remains, Beckmann, who died of cancer in 2018, had an outsize influence that still ripples through the fabric industry. “She was somebody that we shouldn’t forget, because the depth