Caralarga
Based in the historic Hércules textile district of Querétaro, Mexico, Caralarga transforms raw cotton thread into sculptural objects and large-scale installations.
Founded in 2014, the atelier works with materials including leftover yarn, sansevieria fiber and handmade cardboard forms. Traditional techniques such as winding, braiding and macramé are given a restrained contemporary expression, while the workshop remains grounded in community, collaboration and the transmission of artisanal knowledge.
For Homo Faber 2026, Caralarga presents MORSE, continuing its exploration of repetition, rhythm and the expressive potential of a seemingly simple thread.
Your work begins with a very simple material: raw cotton thread. After more than a decade of working with it, what continues to fascinate you about the material and its possibilities?
What continues to fascinate us about raw cotton thread is its inherent beauty, natural origin and endless capacity for transformation. Through weaving, wrapping, braiding and combining it with other materials, we have discovered that something so timeless and everyday can take on sculptural weight and a monumental presence.
We are also interested in exploring the sustainability of the thread. We seek to value natural raw materials such as cotton and sansevieria fiber, while finding uses for remnants from our processes. We aspire to create materials for new designs from what already exists in the workshop, including the spheres we make from thread and cardboard.
Cotton continually reminds us that beauty lies in the essential.
Your work brings traditional craftsmanship into a distinctly contemporary context. How do you balance inherited knowledge and artisanal skill with experimentation and new ideas?
The balance begins with a deep respect for handwork and for the people who make up our workshop. We value the experience our team develops through continuous learning and the exchange of knowledge within a community that trains, supports and cares for one another.
Tradition gives us mastery, rigor and respect for both the material and the quality of the finished work. Experimentation arises naturally when an established technique offers the possibility of creating new forms and designs.
It is a constant dialogue between skilled hands and creative freedom.
What does it mean to present your work at Homo Faber alongside craftspeople from around the world? Has the experience changed how you think about the value of making by hand today?
For us, Homo Faber represents a profound honor and a great source of inspiration. Knowing that our work is recognized in other parts of the world, and sharing a space with artisans, collectives and craftspeople whose traditions we greatly admire, makes us feel incredibly fortunate.
The experience strengthens our belief in the intrinsic value of handwork today. Making something by hand involves time, care and a connection with both the raw material and the design.
Photo 1 & 3: Courtesy of Caralarga. Photo 2: Caralarga co-founder Ana Holschneider captured by Jackie Russo for The New York Times.
caralarga.com
@caralarga_mx
Pascale Theron
For Eindhoven-based textile designer Pascale Theron, experimentation began with seeing a familiar material differently.
Her Feathered Fabrics project transforms ostrich feathers into textile. Each feather is separated into its structural elements before being knotted into a continuous yarn and woven by hand. Rather than treating the feather as ornament, Theron considers its possibilities as fiber.
The work draws on her South African heritage and on the history of ostrich farming in Oudtshoorn. By retaining the feathers’ natural colors and irregularities, she allows the original material to remain present within the finished cloth.
Feathered Fabrics began by looking at a familiar natural material in an entirely new way. What first made you see the ostrich feather not as decoration, but as a material from which a textile could be made?
It began with a shift in how I was looking, rather than what I was looking at. I grew up in South Africa around birds and feathers, but feathers were generally understood through the language of decoration, spectacle or dusting.
While researching Oudtshoorn’s history of ostrich farming, I began to see the feather structurally, as filament and fiber rather than a finished decorative object. At the C.P. Nel Museum, I noticed a tying technique used on a feather-adorned hat and wondered what else it might make possible.
After weeks of taking feathers apart and testing ways of putting them back together, I discovered that the simplest method, knotting, was also the strongest. It allowed me to build a continuous yarn from something that had never been considered yarn before.
You work with the feathers in their natural, undyed state, allowing their individual color and character to remain visible. How important is it that the finished textile retains a connection to the original material?
It is incredibly important. Each feather is like a fingerprint, so no two woven pieces can ever be identical. Even when the same placement technique is used, the result cannot be repeated.
Selecting the feathers is an art in itself. They range from black and white to every shade of gray in between, and must be matched carefully before weaving. I want to celebrate these natural tones, particularly when many people know ostrich feathers only as something that has been bleached and dyed.
That connection to origin also informs how the work is made. My largest pieces are handwoven in South Africa by local textile weavers. I wanted the project to return to where it began and to keep the feathers, yarn and finished textiles as locally made as possible.
Feathered Fabrics draws on a long history of working with ostrich feathers. What role does experimentation play in keeping a traditional craft relevant?
Experimentation keeps a tradition alive rather than allowing it to become fossilized. The tying technique I found at the museum was not new, but no one had asked what it might do beyond decorating a hat. Experimentation begins with that question: taking something with a long history and testing it against a new purpose.
Ostrich farming once revolved around feathers, but today they are largely a by-product of the meat and leather industries. The feathers I use are cut rather than plucked, causing no harm to the birds.
By revisiting techniques such as knotting and weaving, I want to direct attention back to the feather itself. The aim is not simply to create something unexpected, but to show that the material can hold value again in a way that is both contemporary and connected to its history.
Photo 4: Courtesy of Pascale Theron. Photo 5: Elsa Young.
@pascale_theron_studio
@featheredfabrics
Mhairi Boyle
Working in Muharraq, Bahrain, Mhairi Boyle explores the fibers, natural dyes and weaving traditions of the Gulf.
Her practice has developed through sustained collaboration with local craft communities, including the remaining practitioners of nseej weaving in Bani Jamra. Rather than approaching tradition as something fixed, Boyle looks for ways to extend its possibilities through regional materials and careful experimentation.
Her work is deliberately slow. Research, conversation and shared knowledge are valued as highly as the finished textile, revealing craft as a relationship between people, place and material.
Local materials are central to your practice, from Gulf fibers to natural dyes. What can we learn from working closely with the materials that belong to a particular place?
Local materials can teach us about the environment and landscape of a region, including how both have changed over time. Understanding how fibers were traditionally used can shape the way we work with them and the stories we choose to convey.
As landscapes change, we can also explore materials in new ways. Some plants provide both fiber and dye, revealing a versatility that may not be immediately apparent. Experimentation can uncover other uses for materials associated with a particular place or craft.
This may be especially valuable when a tradition is in decline. Finding new possibilities for a local fiber can create fresh interest in the craft and open new prospects for the communities that hold its knowledge.
Your work is rooted in traditional weaving knowledge while exploring new ways of working with these techniques and materials. What is important to preserve, and where is there room for a craft to evolve?
It is important to preserve the processes, equipment and knowledge of a craft, from understanding how fibers grow and are prepared to knowing how a community sets up and works with a loom. These techniques should be documented so we can understand how craft communities work, or once worked if a tradition is no longer practiced.
There is room for evolution in the choice and preparation of materials. Makers might explore different ways of spinning, twisting or stripping down fibers, or introduce fibers that were not traditionally used within a particular craft.
In Bahrain, I discuss ways of experimenting with weaving without changing the processes and equipment that make each tradition distinctive. Collaboration allows craftspeople to exchange knowledge and gently extend what a practice can become.
Your practice places as much value on the relationships and knowledge formed through making as it does on the finished object. What do we risk losing when we lose touch with how things are made?
We risk taking the process, and the labor involved, for granted. A handmade piece contains many layers: the sourcing of the fiber, dyeing, weaving, the maker’s journey and the knowledge carried through each stage.
When everything is expected quickly, there can be less interest in who made an object, how it was made or why a particular process matters. We also lose an appreciation for the character that develops through time. Handmade pieces carry small variations and visible layers of work that give them a particular feeling and finish.
Objects made slowly invite a longer relationship. When we understand the time and knowledge within them, we are more likely to value them, care for them and allow them to gather stories of their own.
Photo 6 & 7: Faisal Al Nasser.
mhairiboyle.com
@mhairi.boyle
Material, knowledge and time
Each of these practices begins with close observation. Caralarga finds monumental potential in raw cotton thread. Pascale Theron dismantles the familiar structure of a feather to create an entirely new textile. Mhairi Boyle works alongside Gulf craft communities to explore how local fibers and inherited techniques might continue to evolve.
Their work reveals craft as something living. Traditional knowledge provides the foundation, while experimentation allows it to remain relevant.
This understanding resonates deeply with Hale Mercantile. Our linen begins with long-fiber flax grown in Belgium and France before being spun, woven and sewn in Europe by skilled makers. Its character is shaped at every stage by the material, the landscape from which it comes and the knowledge of the hands that transform it.
The hand remains present in the cloth.