Maine's Creative Economy

Brahms/Mount Textiles: combining art and manufacturing in Central Maine

By Stephen A. Cole, Coastal Enterprises, Inc.


	Noel Mount posing for a catalog shot with one of Brahms/Mount Textiles' linen and cotton blankets. Photo courtesy of Brahms/Mount Textiles.

"We are artists who manufacture," is both Brahms/Mount Textiles' tag line and an important element in the Creative Economy - artistic expression on a production scale. Since 1983, Claudia Brahms and Noel Mount have been designing and manufacturing heirloom blankets and throws in downtown Hallowell. In the last century, their buildings were also home to artists who manufactured - the stoneworkers of the Hallowell Granite Co., carving architectural elements for civic buildings along the eastern seaboard.

It can be said that Brahms/Mount Textiles grew out of the progressive side of Maine's textile industry, an economic mainstay for generations now nearly vanished. Independently, Brahms and Mount arrived in Maine to work for Guilford of Maine, an environmental innovator and leading manufacturer of office interior fabrics. Both came to their professions through family culture and training. Claudia Brahms, fabric designer, is the daughter of a fashion designer and an interior designer, and studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York and the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science. Noel Mount apprenticed in the dye house of a Manchester, England textile mill and learned textile engineering at the University of Manchester. His task at Guilford was guiding design and construction of a new six million dollar dye house.

Brahms/Mount Textiles was founded in 1983 after the two left Guilford to start a venture with, as Mount puts it, "no one to please but ourselves." The business began with a master weaver producing hand-woven blankets and throws of Brahms' design, which Mount pitched to interior designers and decorators in New York City. A small contribution toward the start-up came as a loan from family. The remainder was lent by a banker rash enough to invest in a persuasive couple with a good business plan.

The early days are indelibly etched in Mount's memory; $27 flights to New York and the slight edge his accent offered in getting in the door of the design firms he had researched in Architectural Digest. Being invited in did not always mean a sale, but it did ensure a critique - a practice that Brahms thinks many artists dislike and ignore. In her mind, a critique was an expression of interest, an opportunity for response that could lead to a relationship.


	Brahms/Mount Textiles is housed in an old granite workshop in downtown Hallowell. Photo by Bryan W. Knicely

The move to blankets manufactured on power looms came when customers such as Neiman-Marcus began ordering Brahms/Mount Textiles' cotton blankets in volume by deadlines not easily met on hand looms. By then, the failure of New England's major textile mills was nearly complete and idle looms were abundant. Brahms/Mount Textiles' artisan-scale manufacture rose from these ashes. Noel bought and refurbished machinery from Lewiston's Bates Mill, the Cascade Woolen Mill in Oakland and mills in Rhode Island, installing the complex production and shuttle looms in Hallowell.

Making blankets seems like a simple thing, but the web of raw materials, services and technical information is complex and far-flung - ranging far beyond Maine's borders. Flax for linen is grown in Latvia and spun in Belgium or Italy. Mount sometimes works with the spinners to design the actual thread - specifying multiple twists or few twists to determine whether the fabric is stiff or soft. The cotton thread is dyed in Easthampton, Mass. Technical information may come from Flaxcraft in New Jersey and economic data on the textile business from a New York trade publication.

Surprisingly, not one of Brahms/Mount Textiles' employees comes from the textile trade, despite its recent demise here. Several stitchers, who work on edging and finishing blankets, came from the shoe industry. Overall, the staff is made up of individuals who, as Brahms describes, "have re-invented themselves here," hired more for their capacity to look her in the eye than how they appeared on paper.

Most of the 10, 000-plus cotton or linen blankets, throws and accessories Brahms/Mount Textiles weaves yearly are sold wholesale. From a list of 1,700 customers, perhaps 400 specialty shops are active buyers at any time. There are also important catalog buyers including Sundance, Restoration Hardware and Hanna Andersson.

Garnet Hill, the high-end natural fibers catalog from New Hampshire, is an especially important customer. It purchases 2,500 blankets annually and regularly mentions Brahms/Mount Textiles in its catalog text. The volume of catalogs mailed by Garnet Hill is truly staggering: 17 million, numerous times each year. For Brahms/Mount Textiles, this is exposure and recognition it could not afford to purchase. If these are the blanket-sellers, who are the purchasers? Research suggests they are predominantly women, age 40-50, in the upper income brackets. Like so many Creative Economy enterprises, Brahms/Mount Textiles is a product of the Baby Boom generation.

The years since the business's founding in 1983 have generally been good ones and the company has averaged sales increases of about 10 percent annually. Last year was an exception. In 2003 sales were just under $800,000, about five percent below the previous year. The current economy feels tight to Brahms and Mount. This is one reason they remain hopeful about the Dirigo Health insurance program: the prospect of health insurance at affordable premiums for their workers - a benefit they have never been able to offer.


	Many of the industrial looms at Brahms/Mount Textiles come from defunct textile mills in Lewiston and Oakland. Photo by Bryan W. Knicely.

Brahms and Mount affirm that they work for the pleasure of it, not the money - but that is not to say they are laissez-faire about the business. Mount watches the financials carefully and always asks, "What will it cost to manufacture this item? What will the margin be?" That artists can not work for nothing was an early tenet of the business reinforced by Brahms' aunt, who asked them, "Who are you going to impress when you starve to death?" To make certain they maintain perspective and do not starve, the business has a board of directors, an uncommon and valuable asset for a small owner-operated firm.

Are Claudia Brahms and Noel Mount artistic business owners or business-owning artists? The latter, in the opinion of this observer, based on their lifestyle and interests. Home for them is the large, airy second floor of the company's design and administration building. In this loft-like space is the assemblage of their lives and art - photography and wood carving for Mount, printmaking and painting for Brahms. A sojourn away from work might be a camping and photography trip or a session at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle.

Within Hallowell, this couple and their business are an acknowledged part of the community. Brahms/Mount Textiles' "factory store" - a long tradition in the textile trade - brings neighbors and visitors face-to-face with the operation and staff. The city itself has lent the business money at a favorable interest rate and Brahms/Mount Textiles has used a Governor's Training Initiative grant to increase workers' skills. This is an arts-based business that is integrated into Maine's community and economic development landscape.

What is ahead for this small company at the beginning of its second generation? Mount says, "You've got to keep steppin' out" - offering the customer something new. For him, that is the lesson from Maine's traditional textile industry, whose death-knell was doing only what the customer asked. At Brahms/Mount Textiles, "steppin' out" includes a collaboration with Maine Heritage Weavers, the small successor to Bates Manufacturing. Maine Heritage is weaving a "lower end" cotton blanket of Brahms/Mount Textiles' design that will retail at $40 and has found a place in the Restoration Hardware and Garnet Hill catalogs. Other promising new ventures include linen bags and book covers with a Vermont firm and a foray into the hospitality trade through an alliance with Hotelblankets.com.

In the end, one returns to Brahms/Mount Textiles' tagline, "We are artists who manufacture" - for Claudia Brahms and Noel Mount are passionate both about art and manufacturing. Brahms believes manufacturing is inherently creative because it is about making something and humans find a basic pleasure in making things. It is an impulse she believes was the key to Martha Stewart's now-tarnished success. That manufacturing had a face and identity is something she maintains our culture ignored, until it was too late. For Mount, "It all begins with the artist... full stop. It is essential that we invest in the artist for the future of us all. The guy on the production line can't take a crank on a nut unless there is a designer with an idea for a product."