HAND-PAINTED SILKS
FOR PROJECTS OF EXCEPTION AND ESCAPE
Textile artist Elo de la Ruë du Can transforms hand-painted silk into exclusive timeless works of art.
Trained at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in textile and fashion design, and a designer for haute couture houses for ten years, Elo combines her mastery of line, colour, and fabric in precious one-of-a-kind
painted silks — envisioned for exceptional interiors and immersive installations.
And Textile Becomes Painting
Elo de la Ruë du Can is a textile artist who creates one-of-a-kind pieces from hand-painted fabrics. Her work focuses on crafting exceptional natural textiles, transformed into silk squares and decorative objects with vibrant colour palettes. Often likened to paintings, her creations stem from a meditative approach to gesture and mark-making, where colour and material resonate in harmony. Each piece reflects the uniqueness of her creative process and chromatic sensibility.
Through her practice, the artist restores textile to a prominent place in art and design, elevating fabric — infused with both soft and contrasting pigments — to the status of collectible objects. Her creations transcend the utilitarian nature of their medium to become true works of art, to be worn, displayed, or revealed in rare and intimate interiors.
From Wearable Art to One-of-a-Kind Furniture Pieces:
Collaborating with Designers
Beyond her hand-painted silk scarves meant to be worn or wrapped around the body, Elo de la Ruë du Can also creates bespoke fabrics on request. Her silks can be used to dress woodwork interiors, closet doors, chair cushions or seats adorned with continuous motifs. She designs folding screens, works on lampshades, or creates unique draperies for tall windows… In each case, the textile and the object must nourish one another, complement and enhance each other.
For Elo, working with fabric is a space for innovation and artistic inquiry — a reflection on how to elevate the final object. The challenge is to imagine a sculptural base that is not simply a “canvas,” but a true element of the whole — part of what she calls “a bilateral and simultaneous weave between textile and object.” Each custom project begins with a meeting, a shared visual desire — for colour, for atmosphere. From this initial conversation, Elo develops concrete proposals through drawings, leading to choices in composition and colour ranges.
This first stage also helps determine the exclusive material support needed to achieve the desired visual and sensory outcome, as well as the precise steps of dye application. Like a musical score, in which each note, each hue and each gesture must follow the next with confidence and precision — all painted freehand. Depending on the intended use of the textile, finishing touches are made in Elo’s studio; but in the case of a furniture collaboration, for instance, this stage is entrusted to the designer’s team or upholsterer, who will apply their own expertise and techniques to fully integrate the textile into the final work.
Sketches, Choreographed Gestures, and the Power of Material
In her studio, Elo carries out each step of the creative process by hand: from initial sketches and preparing the fabric, to applying dyes, steaming, washing, and finishing. Her preferred textiles — cashmere, wool, and silk — mostly sourced from French weaving workshops, are chosen with great care for their unique qualities and their way of interacting with light and colour. Painting on fabric is a complex choreography. Colour spreads through the fibres like watercolour swirling in a drop of water; gestures must be swift and precise so that the shades blend without clashing. Elo describes the process as a delicate balance between control and surrender — with the material always having the final say. Once the painting is complete, the silk is steamed to fix the pigments, then washed and prepared for its final finishes.
From a Japanese Art to French Silk Painting
Yuzen, a traditional kimono decoration technique, uses resist-dyeing through masking to create floral or geometric patterns, sometimes as delicate as lacework. A paste made from rice flour defines the zones that will receive colour. Elo de la Ruë du Can has long sought to interpret and adapt this ancestral method within her own practice — translating it through the gestures and sensibilities shaped by a different lineage: that of French artistic tradition. It is this mastery of a centuries-old technique, reimagined through a contemporary lens, that gives her work its singularity. Each fabric she creates is custom-made, and even when based on the same sketch — like a cartoon in tapestry — no two pieces are ever alike. Each holds a unique tone, transparency, and interplay of colours. The material remains the true master. The alchemy of the moment — the flow of dye into fibre, the artist’s gesture, the surrounding atmosphere — determines the depth, layering, and capillary exchanges between pigment and support.
Through her bespoke creations, Elo explores the dialogue — the symbiosis — between hand-painted silk and the solid material that holds it in tension without ever overpowering it. This pursuit leads to the union of lightness and strength, transparency and density, tradition and modernity — weaving together materials (wood, concrete, silk), craftsmanships (yuzen and French decorative arts), and opening a path toward infinite possibilities.
You can discover more about Elo de la Ruë du Can’s world
and journey on her Portrait page.