Descendants of Wallach Brothers Reclaim Textile Legacy with The Six Bells

Audrey Gelman, founder of The Six Bells inn in Hudson Valley, discovered the Wallach Project's textiles through her interior designer Adam Greco. The Wallach House of Folk Art Munich was founded in 1900 by Jewish brothers Julius, Moritz, and Max Wallach, becoming a major European textile hub that popularized the dirndl in Germany. The Nazis annexed the business in 1937 and seized it on August 1, 1938. Max was murdered in Auschwitz; Moritz fled to New York; Julius wandered Europe and Canada before settling in Pennsylvania. The original textiles were produced by Josef Fromholzer until 2022 (he died in 2023). Descendants across the US, Greece, and Brazil founded the Wallach Project to preserve and reimagine the prints. Gelman, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, contacted Jamie Hall (Max's great-grandson and chair) for a collaboration. On June 24, The Six Bells and Wallach Project will release a collection of home goods in three original prints, including curtains, pillows, dog beds, placemats, napkins, pinafores, and makeup pouches. The project aims to extend the family narrative beyond the Holocaust and create generative, everyday objects rather than artifacts.