Women’s Stories – Amiyah Michaeli Menashe

Outside our studio in Jaffa grows a climbing plant of rare beauty. Every day, at least five people stop to ask what this striking flower is. They truly marvel—looking closely, examining it, sometimes even picking a blossom.

In this blog post, we’re hosting Amiyah Michaeli Menashe, architect and founder of Studio One of One, who preserves native flowers of Israel. Amiyah works with preservation as a craft from the most raw and primary material. The cotton that becomes yarn in our work remains cotton in hers.

The craft of botanical preservation has a rich history, lexicon, and body of knowledge. In a period where our region is marked by conflict and difficulty, Amiyah chooses to pause and look at the primal beauty of nature here in Israel, and to work with it. Her choice echoes values dear to us at iota: deep observation, respect for materials, and preserving handcraft as a way of creating meaning and human connection.

Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Amiyah Michaeli-Menashe, founder of Studio One of One, where I create artworks from dried flowers that I gather from the Jerusalem mountains, where I live, and preserve using a traditional pressing technique.
I’m 47, married to Chico, and mother to Erel, Zohar, and Tom.
Behind the craft of flower-pressing lies a personal story of pausing and looking inward. It marks a pivotal moment in my life, when I shifted my professional path—from architecture, which I studied at Bezalel and practiced for 14 years, to establishing an independent studio immersed in craft and art.

Tell us about your work.
My process is slow: gathering flowers, pressing them for several weeks, and designing compositions with meticulous attention to detail. Over the past two and a half years, I’ve collected a private archive of flowers - mostly from my home region - known in botanical terms as an herbarium. Incorporating them into artworks connects me to memory, place, and the passing of seasons.
The technique originated in the 19th century, when pilgrims visiting the Holy Land bought pressed flowers as souvenirs from sacred sites. Over time, this developed into a local craft that recognized the need to connect landscapes with native wildflowers - and preserve them.
My work invites viewers to revisit these flowers on different surfaces - paper, textiles, glass and clay. Each piece forms a singular moment, emphasizing the unique encounter between a person and nature.

Where do you draw inspiration from?
My foundation lies in the years I studied and worked as an architect. A major project I was deeply involved in (at Tik Projects) was the conservation and reconstruction of antiquities in Caesarea Port. It introduced me to a captivating world rooted entirely in careful handwork - excavations revealing layers of history.

In my creative process, I actively seek encounters with people from diverse disciplines that inspire me - textile, culinary culture, ceramics, photography, botany, and traditional crafts.
And more than anything, books are a constant source of inspiration:
antique pressed-flower albums from the 19th century at the National Library, botanical illustration books (notably Naomi Feinbrun-Dothan and Ruth Koppel), and the extensive archive at the university herbarium in Givat Ram.

How do you begin creating a new piece or collection?
Two elements guide the process: the season and the flower.
Each season offers its own flowers, inviting research, gathering, and creation with what is available at that moment. The pressed flower itself becomes a trigger for new work—no two flowers are the same, and the composition depends on how it was placed in the press.
Once pressed, I explore how to pair each flower with a changing range of materials. The challenge is to create different works from a single type of flower and evolve a new collection from it.

What do you love most about the process or your workday?
No day resembles the one before. There’s movement between the outdoors and the internal creative space of the studio. There’s the excitement of waiting for flowers to dry, and the moment of unveiling them from the press. The flexibility of the work allows me to be the kind of mother I wish to be, while remaining an independent creator.

Another deeply fulfilling aspect is witnessing people's emotional connection to the pieces. Some ask for artworks using a specific flower that holds meaning for them, evoking memory, scent, and place - even though the flower is already dry. Their reactions remind me that the work is a dialogue - between me as the creator and the people who receive it.

How does handcraft relate to your process?
Handwork is the foundation and driving force of everything I do. Great delicacy is required - especially when removing the flowers from the press and assembling the final composition.
When choosing a name for my brand, I knew that each piece must be singular—one of one—made possible by craftsmanship and the unique encounter with each flower.

How has this past year and the situation in the country affected your work?I experience this period as deeply destabilizing, shaking the most fundamental sense of life here in Israel. The studio was built over the past two and a half years - years that have been incredibly difficult personally and socially. I am very active in the protest movement, especially with Mothers' Shift 101, which has brought me into direct contact with the hostages families.
Throughout this time, the studio gave me a field of action—allowing me to express, through craft, the rhythm of nature outside, which has already shifted through eight seasons, contrasted with the suspended sense of time since October 7th.

What are you working on these days?
Alongside making pieces for the stores that carry my work, I’m developing new collections for winter and spring—two seasons rich in raw botanical material. I’m also trying to make time for open calls and artist residencies.
A recent invitation from architect Ari Cohen to give a talk about the story behind the flowers hints that the next step may be offering workshops and sharing the knowledge I’ve gathered.

Tell us something you learned from your grandmother.
There is one dress my grandmother Hadara sewed for my mother. It passed to me, and then to my daughter, and is still hanging in my closet. It is full of quiet elegance: careful stitching, delicate folds, precise choice of buttons.
More than anything, it represents the idea that “God is in the details.”