The woman making $2,000 shaggy chandeliers

Times

2 days ago

As we look up at the gigantic shaggy 'creatures' hanging above us, Angela Damman smiles. 'They are dramatic,' she admits. 'They sort of take on their own personality.'
We're gazing at the latest surreal-looking chandeliers that the American textile designer is creating in the studio of her 22-acre Mexican hacienda. It's located outside a rural village 40 minutes from Merida, the capital of the Yucatan. The Yucatan peninsula is known today for its idyllic beaches and Mayan ruins. Less known is that until the early 1900s, the Yucatan supplied 90 per cent of the world's rope thanks to a native agave plant called henequen. When the Spanish arrived, they referred to the plant as 'green gold' — until the money dried up in the early 20th century with the invention of synthetic fibres.
When Damman moved here with her husband and two children in 2011, the plan was to do up the splendid yet dilapidated hacienda surrounded by lush jungle. (The ruined haciendas of the Yucatan are a legacy from the henequen boom.) But one day Damman, a former environmental consultant, noticed a man wearing a sabucan, a traditional Mayan field worker's cross-body bag. She was fascinated to learn not just that this woven bag was created from the famous 'green gold' but that the plant was still growing in the grounds of her family's new hacienda.
'I've always loved natural materials and the concept of seeking new ideas within existing commodities,' says the 55-year-old, who grew up on a family farm in Minnesota. Her father started one of the first grassroots ethanol fuel plants in the US using corn that was stockpiled and rotting because of the market crisis in the 1980s.
An idea was forming — but she had no clue how to work with this spiky agave. It seemed as if knowledge of handcrafting the plant had become extinct. But Damman didn't give up. 'I asked my housekeeper and she found an old lady called Doña Felipa who'd been weaving henequen fibres for nearly 80 years. Her grandmother taught her when she was 12, back in the days before anyone dreamt of petrochemical synthetic threads.'
With Doña Felipa's help, Damman learnt how the plant fibres were used for craft. It's a long process that involves extracting the fibres, drying them in the sun and boiling them in a cauldron over an outdoor wood fire. Afterwards comes hand-combing and colouring with organic dyes from local trees and plants. The final fibre resembles luxuriant lengths of horsehair that are then woven into textiles using portable back-strap looms. Damman then uses this superfine textile to make handbags and home decor items.
As well as weaving the fibres into textiles, she also began to experiment with using the raw fibres for conceptual pieces such as the chandeliers. When business took off and Doña Felipa couldn't keep up with the textile orders, Damman co-sponsored a weaving school called the Maya Youth Artisan Initiative, which teaches young women from local communities this ancient craft.
'At first the young women weren't convinced about learning the ancient skills,' Damman says. 'Traditionally, henequen weaving didn't make much money.' She explained that the items they'd be making would earn them more because they would be reaching a higher market. She then took them to the Mayan World Museum in Merida to inspire them.
'What began as an idea to work with local plants became my life's passion,' Damman explains. 'Our goal is to support both the land and the rural communities.'
She now grows fibrous plants on five acres of her property (with friends in a nearby village growing a couple more acres for her) and works with about 30 Mexican artisans and workers. Her bags and home decor items are popular, but the shaggy-chic chandeliers are her bestsellers, and cost from $2,350. 'They really are something different. You wouldn't find them in a regular lighting catalogue.'
They form super-sized statement pieces in the new Noa Santos-designed Banana Republic flagship store in New York, and diners at the Los Mochis restaurants in London can eat ceviche under stretches of Damman's reimagined Yucatan green gold.
One chandelier requires about 40,000m of fibre and takes more than three months to produce. Another plant that Damman uses is Sansevieria, or mother-in-law's tongue, since its fibres are softer and finer than henequen. It also happens to be one of the highest oxygen-producing plants in the world.
Alongside their extraordinary shape, Damman's sculptural 'creatures' give off a unique luminosity because each plant fibre is different from the next. At this year's Mexico City Art Week she premiered a chandelier from a new series, From the Underworld. Its atmospheric colours of orange and red glowed as if they were dipped in a gentle fire of hell.
The piece's inspiration is the Ceiba tree, which in Mayan belief symbolises a sacred conduit between the underworld and the heavens. 'This one really feels alive to me,' she says, 'as though it's coming out of the ground and reaching for the skies.' The concept is linked with Damman's own spiritual journey, although she jokes that her children say it looks like something from outer space, but she's fine with that.
'I love all the interpretations,' she says. 'When you keep it simple, it seems to open up the imagination.' angeladamman.com. Damman's works are for sale in London at the Sarah Myerscough Gallery, sarahmyerscough.com