Textile Futures #1: Artisan knitting meets local crafts and iconic materials
Textile Futures 2023 (August-October 2023): Cécile Feilchenfeldt, textile designer + Marlen Tröger, wooden toy maker + Meissen Porcelain Manufactory: Haute Couture knitting meets local craftsmanship and iconic materials
About
Textile designer and artisan Cécile Feilchenfeldt is based in Paris, where her studio works with fashion designers like Balenciaga or Dior for the making of Haute Couture fashion pieces. She focuses on the knitting technique using small knitting machines, originally made for home production. She uses all kinds of unusual materials for her extraordinary creations, which she incorporates into her technically complex knitwear. Her workshop includes around four other knitters, who helping her realizing her designs. She does not commission work outside her studio so that she can retain control over all stages of production of her pieces.
Cécile Feilchenfeldt will produce 5-6 hats, depending on the deliverable material from Meissen Porcelain Manufactory and Marlen Tröger. They are still in the making. Some examples of her former creations of knitting hats you will find below.
All these insights guided her towards her design drafts. In her studio in Paris she explored and experimented with the materials learnt in Dresden and Saxony. Cécile delved into using parts of the iconic chiptrees, which are made by wooden toy makers in the Ore Mountains. Also she used painted wooden and porcelain flowers recurring to the silk flower production. For these design developments she cooperated with wooden toy maker Marlen Tröger in Limbach-Oberfrohna and Meissen Porcelain Manufactory to produce samples.
In August and October 2023 Cécile Feilchenfeldt works with us in the Design Campus in Pillnitz and explores the local textile traditions collected in our museum and local institutions. She visits local craftspersons, a science project and their materials of our entries to the Knowledge Atlas of MADE IN. She learnt about the reinvention of the tradition of local hemp and flax production for future sustainable plantbased materials and the tradition of making wooden toys in the Ore Mountains. Additional she also visits the processing sites of iconic local materials like porcelain and silk flowers.
