HOW&WOW talks – Pauline Esparon and Ruben van der Scheer

Crafts Council Nederland presents ‘HOW&WOW Linen talks’: a series of talks with participating designers and cooperation partners. They present their work and give insight in their process, explorations, questions and results.

Pauline Esparon graduated from the Well-Being design department at Design Academy Eindhoven in 2019. As a designer, she wants to show the beauty of what surrounds us. In her graduation project, she used flax from Normandy. ‘I grew up in the region, and now I live and work there again. It is wonderful to be back; I need a lot of space and peace, and I can find that here.’ For HOW&WOW Linen, Crafts Council Nederland introduced Esparon to Forbo Flooring, since flaxseed oil forms the basis for linoleum. ‘I was always fascinated by linoleum and the fact that it always looks like something else. Sometimes it resembles terracotta, sometimes it looks like cork, but it is none of those. I unravel the composition and the flexibility of the material, what you can do with it and what the possibilities are.

Ruben van der Scheer is a woodturner. As a child, his favourite cartoon character was Willie Wortel; that was what he also wanted, to invent. All the same, he went on to study Kinesiology at the VU (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and now enjoys working as a psychomotor therapist two days a week. In order to give space to his urge to invent, he also studied philosophy. Van de Scheer developed a spindle specifically for the linen project. ‘That’s another challenge in itself. There is an additional functional aspect involved, the spindle has to roll along your leg, it is connected to the flax, a thread is created. It’s compelling to develop a beautiful and functioning spindle within these set parameters.’

Date and time: Friday October 23, 16:00 (CEST)
Language: English
Price: € 5.00
Location: Zoom*

*You will receive a unique Zoom link on the day of the lecture via the email address you provide at the checkout.