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Man and Well being

Lenneke Langenhuijsen

Photographer: DESIGN ACADEMY EINDHOVEN (RENÉ VAN DER HULST)

FROM AN ANCIENT CRAFT TO A NEW FLEXIBLE FABRIC

But what if wood could be made flexible? This is what Langenhuijsen set out to do as part of her search for innovative materials. Her quest has taken her to the South Pacific island of Tonga, where locals beat the bark of the Paper Mulberry tree to make cloth. As part of her Wooden Textiles project, she has documented this ancient craft in a film and expanded the principle to create a new, flexible fabric. Experimenting with techniques often only applied to textiles, such as dyeing and embroidery, she has displayed them in an ‘inspiration book’ to showcase the full potential of wood as a basis for fabric. Further developing a number of these studies, she has created a collection of interior textiles.