Textile Surfaces in Wool Felt
Myrte Kilian
The art of Wool Felt as a Living Canvas, the heart of the motivation and activity is nature, rendered by hand.
Discover the world of Myrte Kilian
Every motif begins with a hand-drawn line. It is very different from digital print
Working from her home atelier near Valence, Myrte Kilian is a Dutch textile artist whose practice is built entirely around the hand, from the original marker drawing on film, through to the silk screen, the dye bath, and the gold foil detail.
Myrte’s work can be defined in four words – wool felt, hand-drawn, hand-dyed, hand-printed. From large-scale wall panels and acoustic surfaces to bespoke screens, cupboard fronts and decorative objects, each piece is entirely conceived and made by her alone.
Every motif Myrte produces begins as an original drawing made by her own hand, never digitally prepared, and this discipline runs through the entire practice, from the first sketch to the finished panel, something she continues to refine and push further with each new commission.
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Rooted in nature, shaped by hand
Myrte masters the dialogue between motif, colour and material, transforming plain wool felt into panels that carry the movement of a garden, a plant, or a passing season. Through hand-drawing, screen printing, dyeing and gilding, each panel reveals a balance of precision and instinct. White ink becomes light against colour, gold foil catches and loses the room’s light through the day, and every surface holds the trace of the hand that made it.
Twenty Years experience with Wool Felt as a medium
A material worked patiently and mastered over two decades. Myrte is proud of the relationships, with her felt suppliers, her local woodworkers, her clients, that this slow craft depends on.
Myrte was born in Amsterdam, an only child raised among adults, which she credits with the strength of her inner creative world. Two grandparents shaped the two halves of her practice directly: her maternal grandfather, a farmer who lived to 103, gave her a lifelong closeness to nature, seasons and working with the hands; her paternal grandmother, a sculptor and linguist widowed in the war, opened her to ballet, painting and the intellectual and cultural sensibility that still runs through her drawing today.
“I try to restitute the feeling you have standing in front of nature.”
Trained first in theatre costume design, a background in pattern-making and construction still visible in her approach to a commission, Myrte went on to qualify as a textile designer and has now worked with wool felt across two decades, maintaining supplier relationships of almost the same length.
Specialist Areas
Applications spanning residential wall panels, acoustics, and bespoke joinery
Residential
Wall panels, screens, and cupboard or joinery fronts designed in collaboration with architects and interior designers. Hand-dyed gradients and hand-printed motifs bring the movement of nature and light into private interiors.
Acoustic Surfaces
Wool felt panels from 3mm carry a tested acoustic benefit alongside their decorative surface, suited to rooms where sound and atmosphere need to be managed together.
Joinery & Cupboard Fronts
Felt applied to full-height cupboard faces or set within framed joinery, combining Myrte’s screen-printed motifs with functional cabinetry.
Screens & Room Dividers
A natural application of the material’s flexibility, developed previously as a “listening corner” screen and produced in collaboration with local woodworkers for framing.
Decorative Art & Bespoke Panels
The Art of Wood Felt
Wool felt is one of the oldest textiles known, formed not by weaving but by compressing wool fibres with water, soap and pressure, a technique with no grain, flexible in every direction, and naturally water-resistant and fire-retardant.
At Myrte Kilian, the felt is worked in two ways: hand-dyed from white or ecru in a garden bath using a pulley system to lift the wet weight, and hand-printed using silk screens exposed from motifs Myrte draws herself, in marker, on film, never digitally.
Every screen begins as an original drawing, printed always in white ink, and finished where needed with hand-applied metallic foil that shifts from gold to almost invisible depending on the light in the room. Built up across days of drying and dyeing, each panel can take a single motif from a garden sketch through to a full-scale architectural surface.
This mastery of hand technique allows the atelier to interpret gardens, light and personal stories into surfaces for the home, from a single acoustic panel to a nine-panel botanical commission.
"For the light to give life to my creations, I use the light and transparent character of the material itself."
Myrte Kilian
