December 28, 2018

Embroidery of foreign packaging and food items

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:45 pm

Dutch artist Dagmar Stap of Groningen is fascinated by packaging and likes to create embroidery with said packaging, which is pretty cool. Until 30 December her work can be found at This Art Fair at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, as well as on her instagram account.

Stap embroiders things such as noodle packages, sweets and tins, all with much attention to detail. “Embroidery takes a lot of time and effort [some 10 days for one piece], but that gives the works more value.” She tends to pick colourful products and products from various countries, especially those she cannot read because of the language. She evens checks with Google translate to see what it is, although many products are from well-known international corporations.

Having studied illustration at the Academie Minerva in Groningen, she would draw and paint packaging she had lying around, out of boredom. Eventually, she began to embroider in order to make the art more tangible.

At this point, she has a whole shelf of embroidered art on display.

(Link and photo: vice.com)

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May 10, 2010

A party with embroided handkerchiefs and grannies

Filed under: Art,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:57 am
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As a follow-up to the project Liefde in de Stad (Love in the City) and going online and letting grannies embroider your handkerchief, I went to the actual ‘Smartlapje’ (handkerchief) party with lots of grandmothers, children, bubbly, cakes, tea, coffee, an entire choir and a decor that turned Paradiso’s usual rock stage into a cozy living room, with couches, carpets and lamps.

The ‘smartlapjes’ were hanging everywhere, as decoration

smartlapje2

Yesterday’s Sunday matinee event was free and was indeed mostly populated by women, serious national media attention and bloggers like me. One grandmother got up and danced quite a bit once the choir (shown below) had finished singing and the DJ started (a woman whose niche market is retirement homes), while others sang the Dutch classics along with the choir, word for word. I did my best on ‘Geef me maar Amsterdam’ (roughly, ‘For me, it’s Amsterdam’) by Amsterdam accordion player and singing legend, Johnny Jordaan.

This charming, fun event proved two things: cultural subsidies are much more important than you’d think for community spirit building and that the horribly negative press about the bad effects of multiculturalism in our nation’s capital is complete and utter nonsense.

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February 23, 2010

Web service lets grannies embroider your handkerchief

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 1:20 pm

Do you need an embroidered handkerchief, but you lack a grandmother with a taste for needle craft? Fear not, smartlapjes.nl employs needle-wielding grandmothers with lots of spare time who will embroider a phrase of your choice onto a handkerchief for only 10 euro.

The delivery time of any given ‘smartlapje’ is ‘when it is ready.’

According to Bright, the site is a part of the Liefde in de Stad (Love in the City) art project.

(Image: a screenshot of smartlapjes.nl)

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