Nicolette Brunklaus
One Week About Fashion & Textile by Lilian Driessen
Nicolette Brunklaus (1959) graduated in 1988 as a fine artist at the Academie Minerva in Groningen. After having worked as an artist for a couple of years, in 1998 she started Brunklaus Amsterdam, a Dutch designstudio, internationally recognized for their printed textiles and lighting objects. Since 2014 she also designs exclusive collections for industries, among which the carpet collection ‘Canvas Collage’ for Egecarpets (Danmark).
Nicolette is an intuitive designer, with a striking use of textiles within interiors as a light and active presence. It is as if she ‘dresses’ the space to transform it. Her work is always inspired by personal memories whose messages resonate universally. She uses storytelling to express her concepts, thus creating intimate, poetic, unique atmospheres. In this way her work personally touches those who interact with it, as her story will become the user’s own story.
Because she cares about the preservation of our environment and climate, all her products are handmade and produced in small series in the Netherlands. Recently, Nicolette has worked in a carpet knotting studio in Morocco for a month to learn this craft, while working with the local women who have been knotting carpets for decades. During this process she became deeply inspired by the power and authenticity of this traditional craft. She has now designed six unique wall hangings that will be shown at the Dutch Design Week later this year.