AhoyAhimsa

In the year 2007 I lived in the countryside of beautiful Bavaria (Germany).
I spent a lot of time with the dog in the forest and pondered on the beauty in nature and how to use it for artwork and products.
Around the same time I found a photograph of petals hanging in a window for decoration on Etsy. This was quite inspiring...

Jewellery made of real petals would be great, I thought. After some time of experimenting I found a way to cover petals in lightweight and clear plastic. Over the years the technique became more and more professional.

In 2010 I moved to Germany's great capital Berlin. This was a big step for me and so I decided to rename my lable to AhoyAhimsa.

Ahimsa is my third middle name. The word "Ahimsa" was used by Gandhi and means "the avoidance of violence". I like the meaning of the name my father gave me.

With the phrase "AhoyAhimsa" I was making myself a good wish. Ahoy stands for "have a good journey" - what my new start in Berlin felt like. Sailing without knowing either the destination or the path. All I had was some trust in my work and that the things would find their way.

I also have two friends who love my work and offered to help me with raising my petal business. We started growing flowers on our balconies, made jewellery, sold them on markets in Berlin and became successful quite fast. The jewellery was published in magazines and we were invited to sell them on markets participating "Berlin Fashion Week" and we also had some requests by TV.

In 2011 my good friend Eva started selling our products on Etsy. Our products are great and Eva quite talented so she could raise AhoyAhimsa fast on Etsy.

After 1 1/2 successful years on Etsy Eva is meeting new challenges now.
I can't replace Eva but hope I will do my job as good as she did.

The first thing I do is writing this text…
…and the rest will be history.