The scene of a local motorcycle taxi driver hand-knitting a small fishing net at his stand next to a canal will never fade away from my childhood memory. It was the first time I saw the life behind the fishing net. Throughout my textile practice, I’ve reconsidered the fishing net with curiosity and nostalgia. Behind its mesh and diamond shaped structure, I see craftsmanship and the story of its creation. I would like to preserve and encourage these precious values in the net with my Master project Sitting with The Fisherman. The fishing net is reinterpreted to everyday life with a trace of stories within it. The net becomes a tool to gather people together like the fishing net does in the fisherman village. This project will be a pilot idea to others in different contexts, to preserve their precious traditional craftsmanship, to keep it alive by transforming the skill and technique to a new interpretation.

This degree work in textile design positions itself in the textile- and surface pattern design field by investigating the interpretation of the translation from traditional to contemporary. The motive is to apply a sustainable aspect to surface pattern design by “recycling” traditional and cultural patterns into renewed contemporary expressions. The aim is to design a collection of contemporary surface patterns by exploring and interpreting traditionally common patterns, such as curbits and folklore painting. Modern printing techniques, new technology and materials have been used in the investigation. Three suggestions for a contemporary surface pattern collection have been developed. A repeated pattern that has been laser engraved and colored on acrylic plexiglass, a mirrored pattern that has been digital printed, coated, and cut to reveal the tabletop, and a large-scale placed pattern that has been transfer printed in three layers to enable for a color-mixing-effect. This project contributes to reinforce the knowledge of traditional craftsmanship and establish a new legacy that can serve as both a link to pattern history and as an archive of today. The project desires to influence how a sustainable approach to “recycling” traditional or cultural images and motifs can be used to design new surface patterns.