Sonya Mackintosh
RISD ’90 [Textiles]
Born and raised in London, Sonya Mackintosh discovered the allure of textiles while working at a design shop that sold screen-printed fabrics. Her nascent interest in the field soon drew her to Istanbul, where she collaborated with a chemist and traveled from village to village encouraging Turkish carpet weavers to preserve traditional natural dye techniques. “That really influenced my work,” she says. After RISD Mackintosh became a designer at the International Woolen Company in New York and later freelanced for Kingsley Associates, one of the premier dealers of commercial and residential upholstery. She now runs smARTWORKS, a studio in Great Barrington, MA, where she uses knitting machines combined with hand-crocheted finish work to create her wonderfully textured scarfs, wraps and hats.