Ίχνη: Tracing Nature - Milan Design Week with Michelangelo Foundation

A collaborative work by Christiana Vardakou & Paolina Bumeder

Since 2019, Christiana has been part of the Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship guide—an international platform that celebrates exceptional craftsmanship and connects artisans across the world. This relationship led me to apply to the Homo Faber Fellowship, a programme designed to support the transmission of knowledge between master artisans and emerging makers.

Through this process, I was selected as a master artisan and Paolina Bumeder joined my atelier in Athens as my fellow. Over the course of our collaboration, we worked closely—sharing techniques, exchanging perspectives, and exploring the possibilities of natural dyeing as both craft and artistic language.

“Ίχνη” — meaning traces — is the result of this exchange.

The room divider is crafted from silk produced in Soufli, Greece, honouring a material deeply embedded in local textile heritage. Using the eco-print technique, we worked with plants collected from the Greek landscape, allowing their natural pigments to imprint directly onto the fabric. Each mark carries the memory of the plant, the season, and the place it was gathered.

The composition moves between organic spontaneity and subtle structure, with gentle references to Art Deco geometry emerging through rhythm and repetition. It reflects not only the natural world, but also the dialogue between two makers—between experience and new interpretation.

This piece embodies the essence of the fellowship: the passing on of knowledge, the evolution of tradition, and the creation of something that neither could have made alone.

Presented during Milan Design Week, the work extends beyond function. It acts as a textile landscape—filtering light, shaping space, and holding within it the traces of a shared journey, a place, and a moment in time.