Birgit Moenig has been sharing her love
of painting on silk for over 25 years. What she loves even more than
painting on silk is meeting women who feel happier because they are
wearing one of her scarves. And that's what it all comes down to:
bringing as much happiness as possible, through the beauty a silk
scarf can bring to a person and her world.
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A happy customer, wearing her
new Birgit scarf |
Hailing from Germany originally, Birgit
was exposed to silk painting very early. Many German housewives know
how to paint on silk, so it was a common, everyday thing to do.
Initially, she just picked up some silk, opened some dye, and put it
on the silk as she had seen so many others do so effortlessly. She
applied her artist eye to it as well, and got inspiration from other
artist friends also applying dye to silk. “It's an on-going
learning process even today,” she exclaims. “I still talk to my
artist friends, and we are always trying new things to see what works
best.”
Before painting on silk, Birgit had
tried watercolor on paper, “but it didn't take,” she says.
Acrylic on canvas was better, and in fact she painted and sold
miniature folk paintings at the Pike Place Market when she and her
husband first arrived in the States in 1980. But dyeing silk was
what she really loved to do. “Designing something and staying
inside the lines isn't very fun,” she says. “So I developed my
silk dyeing to avoid that. It's a more abstract approach with colors
overlapping and flowing together.”
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Using a brush to "paint" the dye
onto the white silk |
People are drawn to the beautiful
colors Birgit uses on her scarves. At Manya Vee Selects, we love to
watch people have their eye drawn to our scarf rack and its colorful
array of her scarves. They can't resist walking over and touching them! Birgit finds the color choices and blending to be a constant
challenge. “It's a wonderful mystery. When it's all done, that's
when you know whether it worked or not.”
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| Multi-colored scarf by Birgit |
The technique is what causes the
challenge. A non-toxic, water-based liquid dye is applied to dry,
white silk. Colors are always more intense when they are wet, so
controlling the strength of each hue is difficult. In addition, not
as many colors are available as before, so that means more blending
is required to achieve a full palette with lots of variety. In the
end, Birgit confesses that her color choices are very intuitive. Of
course, I have a feeling her 25 years of experience helps guide the intuition to get her
beautiful results.
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| Birgit's scarf rack at Manya Vee Selects |
Birgit works with her husband, Dieter,
closely these days. This teamwork began when he lost all contracts for his own business after 9/11. He had been making high-tech satellites for ships. That
left him with a lot of time on his hands. One piece of equipment he
used in his business is a water-jet, which can cut cleanly through
metals. He designed some 3-D ornaments made out of Boeing
surplus aluminum, each one cut with that water jet. They were very
successful. More designs followed based on customer requests.
Next, customers began asking for 3-D
earrings. This required much smaller pieces, and thus more precision
in cutting. His huge machine wasn't made for such detail. Upon
discovering it would cost $28,000 to re-tool it, he gave up for a
while. But the requests kept coming, so he figured out a way to
re-tool it himself, costing only $2,000. He graduated the metal to
titanium since aluminum has such a low perceived value, and grew his
own customer base with this new product.
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| Three notKnot styles |
 |
A scarf woven into a
notKnot |
The next product he invented ties Dieter's and
Birgit's respective products together very closely – the notKnot! Based on a concept floating around in Birgit's head, each notKnot is cut out with the water jet using thick stainless steel. It
allows a person a great deal of flexibility in how to wear the scarves, by weaving them in and out of the openings, making the scarf
a bit more like a piece of jewelry.
Now, in addition to showing her scarves at Manya Vee Selects in Edmonds, they tour the country together
doing art fairs and selling their wares together, finding new fans at
each new show they do. Birgit loves returning to a place and meeting
customers for a second, third and fourth time. It gives her great
joy to hear how much the women enjoy wearing her scarves. It is an
extra special day when someone sends her a card or email letting her
know how much they love wearing her scarves.
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| Birgit and Dieter at an art show |
We're in our 12th year now
at Manya Vee Selects, and Birgit is one of just a few artists whose work we've carried since the beginning. Her scarves find passionate new wearers almost daily. We
love passing along those stories to Birgit from our own customers,
who simply can't resist that scarf rack and end up buying one, then
two, then another for a gift, and so on. Go ahead and write your
story here in the comments about your Birgit scarves, so we can share
it with her too.
And of course, make your own pilgrimage to The Scarf Rack, and see for yourself how happy and beautiful a new Birgit scarf can make you feel!
See you soon,
Manya
P.S. Here are links to previous blogs that show some scarf-tying methods.
April 16, 2012
