Fascination | Textile

In Fascination | Textile, textile designer Liset van der Scheer shares her extensive knowledge and passion for textile techniques. Over her 45-year career, she developed a wide range of new industrial methods and applications. She achieved this by deconstructing existing techniques and then adapting them to suit her own needs. She created designs, yarns, structures, colour series, and products for clients such as Van Besouw, Casalis, Danskina, and De Ploeg, as well as textiles for her own label, TeTTeX. In 2005, she won a Dutch Design Award for her collection of knitted bathroom textiles.

In 2022, she launched the website knowhowwow.nl to share her expertise. Fascination | Textile is an extensive and enriched compilation of all that knowledge.

The book is divided into three sections: In a brief introduction, Liset van der Scheer explains what motivated her to create this book. Following that, Caroline Boot (former curator of the TextielMuseum) interviews Van der Scheer, discussing the course of her career and offering insight into her professional and artistic development.
Mienke Simon Thomas (former curator of design at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) places Van der Scheer in a historical context, exploring the origins of the textile designer profession.
“I challenge my fellow designers, both now and in the future, to make new discoveries, thus continuing to challenge and enrich the textile industry,” says Van der Scheer.

A beautiful series of image pairs at the heart of the book illustrates how the world around Van der Scheer has been an endless source of inspiration for her designs. It can be seen as an argument for keeping your eyes open and continuing to marvel. At the back of the book is an overview of industrial textile techniques, referencing images in the book where these techniques were applied. Each technique is accompanied by a brief explanation and a clear diagram.