April – May 2026
In November 2025 I got the news I was selected by KF Hein Fonds as one of the ‘Grensverleggers’ artists. My plan, which was a longtime wish, was to dive into the tradition of Blaudruck. Blaudruck is one of the few textile dyeing traditions still active in Europe. It is a resist-technique with blockprinting and Indigo dyeing, which was copied from Indian blockprinting techniques.
End of April, beginning of May 2026 I got to make a small journey to Blaudruck, blueprinting. During this journey into Blaudruck I am doing a deep dive into the traditional Blaudruck technique to uncover more on how the cotton printing industry in the Netherlands worked. How was the technique adapted to create products for the Southeast-Asian market? How did patterns change or were made to fit the use abroad?
Thanks to the financial support of KF Hein Fonds I was able to make this journey!
Read more about this journey on the blog on the website of KF Hein in Dutch, ‘In de Blauwdruk-leer: Sabine Bolk reist naar Oostenrijk‘:
And on my blog Journey to Batik in the blogpost ‘Preparing the Blaudruck journey‘ and ‘In the Blaudruck apprenticeship‘.
My blaudruck journey is far from over. Not only is there still much to discover on how Blaudruck was used to produce imitation Batiks, I also would love to visit more Blaudruck-printers that are still active, and of course dive further in the actual block-making of it all. Since my return I have been experimenting myself with combining batik & blaudruck, dyeing it with Indigo. So to be continued, I want to thank the KF Hein Fonds for making my journey } In de Blauwdruk-leer | In the Blaudruck apprenticeship { possible.
Their “Grensverlegger-beurs”, which is a wordplay on grens = border, but the word means boundary pusher or to open up new horizons, really did this for me. It was so inspiring and so lovely to connect with makers in Austria. I saw so many similarities between the blaudruckers and modelnmaker and the pembatiks. Their passion and skills to keep a heritage alive.
Thank you everyone for welcoming me and special thanks to Klaus Rink for joining me!
