Henar Iglesias

Henar Iglesias’ mother is a milliner and introduced her daughter to the world of craftsmanship from a very young age. When Henar was eight, they went to the closing down sale of the last local featherworking studio. Her mother was distraught at the thought there would be no more featherworkers in Madrid. Though she joined her mother’s workshop at 14, Henar later headed to university to study mathematics. Yet, she continued her millinery alongside her studies, specialising in featherwork. She further developed her work by working for a French interior designer for 12 years, integrating featherwork into furniture designs. Finally, she opened her own studio, dedicated to interior decoration and design with feathers.

To create her works, Henar Iglesias uses a large array of techniques that stem from her background in millinery, as well as her passion for pre-Columbian featherwork. Among these techniques, she specialises in mosaic featherwork. This technique allows her to generate volume through her bas-relief compositions that resemble traditional tesserae mosaics. These are created by superimposing feathers according to carefully calculated patterns. She uses this technique to build on her inspiration of pre-Columbian featherwork, which itself tends to be flat. She tries to work with feathers from autochthonous species and aims only to buy feathers that have been found on the ground in the countryside and not those from non-regulated markets or the by-products of hunting.

One of Henar Iglesias’s greatest sources of inspiration is pre-Columbian featherwork and art, in part due to her Mexican heritage through her father. She dreams of one day having a bird farm like those of the pre-Columbian cultures who were able to change the colours of birds' feathers according to their needs. This could be done depending on the food given to them in accordance to the season. They would conserve food such as fruits and feed these to the birds throughout the various seasons in order to control the colour of their feathers.

Pattern of Crafts Exhibition