Step Out of the Ordinary with Textile Designer Mariadela Araujo

What first attracted me to textile designer Mariadela Araujo’s work was her bold use of color. She combined neon green and black with tomato red and a touch of grey. Mariadela’s palettes are daring and, when we met this summer in Barcelona and decided to collaborate, she inpired me to step with her out of the ordinary.

We decided to work together on a few custom pieces of furniture. Mariadella often works with tulle to create collages. Above is one of her tulle installations. Her textile work focuses on color relations and how layers and textures work together to create illusions of new colors and forms. We wanted to play with this technique using tulle in a variety of colors. I had a star-shaped ottoman that I’d been waiting to redesign and this seemed like the perfect blank canvas.

The ottoman itself is a wild piece that I snatched up at a sale on the North Fork of Long Island. It’s big enough to curl up and take a nap on and consists of eight big rays. We decided to layer five or six layers of tulle and overlap colors creating secondary and tertiary colors on the star’s rays.

After I sent her the specs from New York, Mariadela sent back large, bright rectangles of tulle. We layered and stiched them onto the ottoman in our workshop and upholstered the sides of the star in a 100% felted wool by Maharam. I liked the idea that from the side, the ottoman looked unassuming, but on top you’re met with an explosion of color.

This is one of my favorite pieces that I’ve done. It’s a really cool piece of furniture re-imagined by a brilliant artist: a truly one-of-a-kind piece. Here it is in our booth at Field+Supply.

rachael@doublerdesign.net / 440-371-5846