Sheila Hicks for Knoll Textiles

Sheila Hicks. VERS DES HORIZONS INCONNUS, 2023. Photography: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist, galerie frank elbaz, Meyer-Riegger, and galleria Massimo Minini.

Sheila Hicks. Soaring Cloud / Nuage Volant, 2025. Photography: Claire Dorn. Courtesy the artist and galerie frank elbaz, Paris.

Sheila Hicks. Terre Divisée, 2025. Photography: Claire Dorn. Courtesy the artist and galerie frank elbaz, Paris.

Sheila Hicks. Hopeful Horizon, 2025. Photography: Claire Dorn. Courtesy the artist and galerie frank elbaz, Paris.

Sheila Hicks. Cour de Rohan Autumn, 2018. Photography: Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy the artist and galerie frank elbaz, Paris.

Sheila Hicks. Right to Speak (Droit de Parole), 2022. Photography: Claire Dorn. Courtesy the artist and galerie frank elbaz, Paris.

Widely credited with elevating the status of fiber art on an international stage, Sheila Hicks is known for expansive explorations of form, color, and construction across a prolific body of work and a career spanning more than sixty years. With work exhibited across arts and cultural institutions globally, Hicks has received countless accolades and honors including membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. She lives and works from her studio in Paris.

A 1960s collaboration with Knoll Textiles at the outset of Hicks’ commercial career was the first to bring the artist’s study of Andean weaving techniques to industry.

Pages from Hicks’ notebook, 1958. © Sheila Hicks Studio.

A Hicks minime frame with work in progress. © Sheila Hicks Studio.

A page from Hicks’ thesis, Andean Textile Art, 1957. © Sheila Hicks Studio.

Hicks became interested in textiles while studying painting and art history at Yale University, where she wrote an undergraduate thesis on pre-Incan weaving techniques. In her research, and during subsequent travel in the Andes, Hicks encountered an elemental check motif which would inform her design for Altiplano.

A champion of the leading design minds of her time, Florence Knoll took an interest in Hicks’ work and invited her to collaborate. Hicks experimented with fiber, yarn, and pattern scale to ultimately develop a textile suitable for woven upholstery.

Sheila Hicks weaving on a back-strap loom, Mitla, Oaxaca, México, 1961. Photography: Faith Stern.

Knoll Textiles introduced the textile as “Inca” in 1966. For the contemporary version, Hicks chose the name, Altiplano, to reflect the Andean highland region where variations on the ancient check are still woven today.

Image courtesy of Knoll Archives.

Altiplano by Sheila Hicks, 1966 is a mid-scale checker with alternating sections of horizontal and vertical lines.

Reissued according to current standards, Altiplano features heathered yarns that are spun, woven, and pressed by a single resource in Turkey, thereby reducing the environmental impact of standard textile production. An updated palette brings to life Hicks' vision of emulating the naturally occurring colors of the Andes.