Gerriets

What they do

Gerriets supplies what audiences look at but rarely think about: main curtains, stage velours, backdrops, gauzes, horizon cloths, flame-retardant decorative fabrics, dance floors, curtain tracks and, above all, projection screens. Its sewing studios make curtains and drops to order, and a high-frequency welding shop joins projection film into seamless surfaces. Installations range from about one square metre to around 3,000 square metres.

Why it matters

Large projection surfaces are only convincing if they have no visible seams. Gerriets credits itself with developing the world's first seamless giant projection screen fabric, and in 1985 it acquired its own looms for fabrics up to 12.45 metres wide. Its best-known screen material, OPERA, grew out of a request from the Paris Opera in the 1960s, according to the company history. Since 2008 the firm has concentrated on very large projects under names such as MEGASCREENS and mega curtains.

Products to know

• OPERA projection films: front and rear projection screens for stages.
• Stage velours and curtains: made to measure.
• Horizon cloths: seamless fabrics up to about 12 metres wide.
• Curtain rail systems: including motorised tracks.

The German angle

The story begins in the ruins of post-war Freiburg. Hans Gerriets founded a textile wholesale business in April 1946 and in 1949 managed the reconstruction of the Freiburg theatre, which drew the firm towards the stage. His son Walter expanded into theatre supplies from 1955, and ready-made curtains followed at the end of the 1950s. The headquarters moved to Umkirch near Freiburg in 1970. Subsidiaries followed in Allentown, USA (1980), London (1986) and a production site across the Rhine in Volgelsheim, Alsace, which grew from 20 to about 90 staff by 2015. Three generations of the family, most recently Hannes Gerriets, have run the business.

Sources

• Gerriets: Company history
• Prolight + Sound: Curtain Call, Gerriets