The Queen of Felt -- Mary-Ann Williams

More about Mary-Ann Williams 

• She was born 1965 in Cape Town, South Africa, studied Design in Cape Town and Germany and decided to stay in Germany because of Apartheid.
• In 1984 she started using felts (felting) for fashion and hats.
• After starting with her own fashion and hats collection she later specialized in the development of textile products in the HIGH END section of interior design. Her hat designs are furious. She is a hat-architect. She has become cult object through her hats. ... as well as the hats.
• She creates home accessories, bowls, lights, table accessories, kitchen accessories, living accessories, greeting cards, bags, carpets, hats and fashion and she is advising in interior design solutions.
• Her innovative designs are gaining international interest.
• Her most recognized designs are the Flokati felt carpets which she invented. Those carpets are easy to clean, biodegradable and single felt pieces can be renewed. Those rugs found acknowledgement through a long number of awards.
• She recently received FORM, IF PRODUCT DESIGN AWARD GOLD 2004, IF MATERIAL AWARD 2005, Chicago GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2005.
• She developed a chaiselongue (daybed and carpet) made out of pure felt without any use of foam or filling material. (IF MATERIAL AWARD 2005 and Chicago GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2005).
• An international boost of recognition found her PLISSEE LAPTOP BAG which doesn´t only look different to the mass of offered bags but also includes characteristics like perfect shock absorption although being made out of one single piece of material. The conscious lack of filling material makes this bag fully biodegradable.
• She uses materials like historic and innovative fabrics, wood, synthetics, rubber, metal or paper in her designs.
• Her collections are always developed under the background of raw materials, production, duration (cleaning or repairing) and ecological aspects.
• She loves minimalism but doesn't avoid pleasures of shapes and precious decorations.
• She brings structures and 3-dimensionality into the so far known 2-dimensionality (carpets etc.).
• The difference in her work appears in long term steps of testing and improvement which makes form, function, quality and ecology a simultaneous aspect in design.
• As a natural consequence a lot of designers regularly visit her website to search for ideas. Although some of her designs were laughed at by some people in the beginning, they turn out to be trendsetting and are copied from companies and designers after a short time.
• Mary-Ann was one of the first designers working with dyed high quality wool felts. She invented the machine-washable pure new wool felt which was a big step towards quality improvement for the daily use. So far felt could only be dry-cleaned. She first came up with combinations of felt used together with other materials like metal, wood, glass or rubber etc.
• She prefers making trends instead of following them.