Angela Damman is an American designer who works with the native plant fibers of Yucatán, Mexico, from a studio in a late-19th-century henequen hacienda at Telchac Pueblo, northeast of Mérida. Raised on a farm in Minnesota and formerly an environmental consultant, she moved with her family from Colorado to Yucatán.
Drawn to henequen, the agave once known as Yucatán’s “green gold,” she spent two years working with local artisans to refine the fiber until it had a texture like horsehair. She and her husband grow henequen, sisalana agave and sansevieria on the property, and she works with artisans in neighboring Maya villages. Her studio, which describes its work as “modern sustainable luxury,” makes handbags, textiles and home decor alongside limited-edition chandeliers and furniture. According to her studio, she co-founded the Maya Youth Artisan Initiative with Ashley Kubley of the University of Cincinnati; in it, young women in rural Yucatán learn from their elders to weave henequen on backstrap looms.
At Design Miami in 2022 Sarah Myerscough Gallery of London presented her sansevieria-fiber chandelier, which ELLE Decor called the showstopper of the booth. In 2023 Latin American Design Week in Washington, DC, named her the recipient of its first annual Sustainability Award. According to her studio, in April 2025 she showed From the Underworld, a floor lamp, in Four on the Floor during Milan Design Week, at the invitation of Thomas Cooper Studio. In October 2025 she opened her studio for Nepantla, an exhibition curated by Nadia Guitteau of ALRATITOstudio, and it returned as a pop-up during the first Week of Art Yucatán in late January 2026.
In May 2026 ELLE Decor named her one of its Rising Stars in product and textile design, and Architectural Digest, reporting a visit to the hacienda by a design tour led by Nate Berkus, wrote that her shaggy chandeliers had “made Damman a rising design star.” In June 2026 she was among the artists in After the Applause, an ALRATITOstudio exhibition at the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles.
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