Curlew Quarterly - Issue No. 4 - Summer 2018

she had placed her work with retailers in Dumbo, including, though not limited to, Mel en Stel, Modern Anthology, and Stewart Stand. However, in 2010, things changed when Garnet Hill asked her for the exclusive right to market and sell a collection of pillows that Kaplan had created, with words and phrases stitched upon them such as “Sunshine,” “Peanut,” and “Sweetpea.” This was Kaplan’s best selling work at the time.

The Garnet Hill representative who Kaplan was working and speaking with at the time requested the exclusive in April of 2010 –––– Kaplan agreed to the proposal, and shortly thereafter began work on the pillow collection. By June 2010, she hadn’t heard anything from the representative, and followed-up with Garnet Hill. “They told me everything was solid, and that the agreement was still in place, and set in stone.” By September she still hadn’t heard anything, and she grew more concerned, as for the previous seventeen years, she had confirmed her order with Garnet Hill before the end of September.

When she contacted Garnet Hill again, their representative told her that they wouldn’t be moving forward with her work that year. “They were my biggest customer for seventeen years. I depended on them, and they asked me for an exclusive, so I wasn’t looking for any other customers. I trusted them. It really made things difficult.”

A few months later, Kaplan was looking through the Garnet Hill catalog for the Autumn 2010 season and noticed a pillow collection that looked eerily similar to her own work.

“Even the description was almost the same as how they had previously described my work; except the artist was ‘Made in India.”

Garnet Hill’s request of an exclusive, failure to follow through, and then subsequent severing of their working relationship with Kaplan changed everything with her business, and made it difficult for her to stay within her own studio within 68 Jay Street. “This was happening with a lot of people in the textile business at the time. Companies and catalogs were sending a lot of working overseas, things that were previously made locally,” Kaplan explained.

“Also, Garnet Hill started out as a small company, but when they were bought by Home Shopping Network, a lot of things changed there, and the way that they did business and worked 95