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
One of the happiest passengers who sailed early yesterday for Europe on the Hamburg-American liner New York was Mrs. Ida Jolles, who succeeded while here in getting the Treasury Department to reduce the tariff on petit-point, done by a society of women in Vienna who have been left in reduced circumstances by the World War.
"The new tariff raised the duty on this needlework art to 95 per cent which completely killed the industry," she said, "and the 3,000 members lost their incomes. I explained this to the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington and after a discussion and looking into the matter carefully he had the duty reduced to 40 per cent, which is 20 per cent less than it was before, so that I am returning to Vienna very happy to carry the good news.
"Many of the members who do this work belong to the old Austrian aristocracy. The treasury made the reduction because petit-point is a piece of art."
Mrs. Jolles, head of the society, brought a letter from the Treasury Department to the Appraiser here, informing him of the reduction in the tariff on the work.
Another passenger on the New York was Vladimar Shavitch, conductor for the past seven seasons of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, who is going to the State Opera House in Moscow for his fourth season. He was born in Russia and is now a citizen of the United States. His wife and their daughter Boliva accompanied him.
Mrs. Ida Jolles Kohlberg, widow of Joseph Jolles, a needlepoint manufacturer, and of Alfred Kohlberg, the anti-Communist importer who was known as "head of the China lobby," died Saturday in her home at 29 East 64th Street. She was 71 years old. Before World War II, she was decorated by the Austrian Government for her work in international trade. She and Mr. Jolles founded a needlepoint industry that employed more than 10,000 persons and spread to Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Madeira Islands and China. She lived in the United States during World War II, then returned to her native Vienna to help re-establish Austrian industry with Marshall Plan aid. Mr. Jolles, whom she had married in 1919, died in 1941. She was married to Mr. Kohlberg in 1956.
