Award winning designer Michelle Butler has a passion for making textile art. Her love of colour and the manipulation of textiles has enabled her to refine her aesthetic senses but also developed abilities to apply her talents to more functional outcomes. Today, Michelle proves this point with an impressive array of awards and media attention.

There are two great inspirations to which Michelle constantly returns. Structural geometry and decorative forms found in nature. She develops these through intensely colourful studies but quickly moves on to experimental work in actual textile. Another skill she has which Michelle sees as influential in her life and work is ice skating. For 8 years she competed internationally in synchronized skating bringing the same rhythm, poise and precision that this demands to her strong and vigorous control of form in her designs of soft furniture pieces.

In 2002 Michelle was nominated ‘Best New Designer’ by the Society of Designer Craftsmen which praised her consummate use of colour and skilled construction techniques. In the same year, with the help of the Princes Trust and East London Small Business Centre, she set up her design business ‘ISOLYN’ and has since exhibited at a number of public and trade events in the UK, USA, Paris, Prague and Frankfurt. The British European Design Group founded by Karin-Beate Phillips has also helped Michelle to get Government funding for international trade events. She now works mainly batch production for retailers in the UK and worldwide, along with commissions by architects and private individuals, designing for manufacturers and working with education programs, museums and community-based projects.