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German couple enjoys life and career in Hangzhou
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WHILE many Chinese designers want to pursue advanced studies abroad, a German designer couple, Christoph John and Nicole Goymann, has spent six years in Yuhang, Hangzhou to learn Chinese arts and crafts.
Fascinated by the Chinese culture and fast-growing economy, they stayed to explore possibilities of starting a design business. They not only developed a career here but also established their home and now have a 2-year-old daughter.
“There is so much to learn about Chinese handicraft,” Goymann enthused.
Her husband agreed. “I love the crazy ideas of ancient Chinese,” John said, pointing at a cattail leaf fan in his hand. “The stem is the handle; the leaf is the fan; all you need to do is to trim the edge of the leaf,” he added.
“We cannot blame people for not using old stuff,” John remarked on vanishing traditions. “What we can do is to make old things trendy and cool so people want to use them again.”
Goymann is now a freelance apparel designer for big brands such as Puma. She also teaches at the China Academy of Art as a guest lecturer. She has produced her own design brand “Julirala.” John teamed up with renowned Chinese designer Zhang Lei and Zhang’s wife Jovana from Serbia to found their design house called PINWU.
PINWU invites designers to participate in decorative projects involving traditional materials like bamboo, silk and rice paper. They have won many international design awards, including the Salone Satellite Award, the “Best of the Best” Red Dot Design Award, and the Elle Decor Award China.
One of their masterpieces is the Piao Paper Chair inspired by the traditional bamboo-paper umbrella. They discovered that layers of bamboo paper glued together make a strong material. Piao means wavy in English and the chair has a wavy brim.
The first edition of the paper chair had a wooden base. The second edition was woodless but the chair can support a weight of 500 kilograms. Now, they weave bamboo strips into paper layers and give the chair a clean-cut brim and paint the concave side with colored wax to keep off dirt.
John also designed the Dan Paper Lamp, which looks like a big mushroom on the floor with a white papier-mache shell and a wood stand inside.
His more recent work is the Bing Book Shelf which reminds people of latticed windows in Chinese architecture. John favors the “cracking” design and makes a wooden shelf composed of four irregular pentagon frames. One can juxtapose the frames for a different look.
“There are many opportunities to draw on rich heritages. We try to bring them back and make them alive,” John said.
He studied Chinese carpentry for three years and loves making things by hands. So does his wife, who used to be a dressmaker for a couple of years before going to college to study fashion design.
In 2014, the couple issued their joint product, Leizu Shoes, named after the legendary Chinese matriarch who invented silk making. The shoes are made of silk threads so fine they could be mistaken for strands of blond hair.
The couple winds wet silk threads around shoe moulds and uses natural silk glue to hold them together. After the glue tries, a pair of ladies’ shoes is born.
They buy silkworm cocoons from areas around Hangzhou and do silk reeling themselves with a traditional reeling machine, similar to the one invented in 4,000 years ago.
The high-heeled shoes have soles made with mulberry barks — from the same trees that feed silkworms with fresh leaves. The heels are molded in transparent acrylic. Though their Leizu Shoes are now for the eyes only, the couple hopes to produce wearable pairs that are water-resistant.
Goymann is an environmentalist and uses cocoons thrown away due to some flaws. She spins silk threads of different lengths together for as long as she likes. The thick threads give a cotton-like texture and suitable for winter wear. What a bonus!
Goymann also twists bamboo paper into yarns and weaves yarns into rugs and pillows. She also weaved paper and silk into a tapestry called CloudSilk.
As PINWU tries to collect traditional materials and revive traditional handicraft skills, the studio received help from the Yuhang District government and established the Rong Library, a library-museum that collects and displays traditional materials and handicrafts from around the country.
The library’s collections range from ceramics to enamel ware, fabrics and silver works. It hired an old bamboo weaving master who is capable of 200 types of basket works to work there. “It is imperative to salvage the works and skills of old craftsmen because once they die, their art may be lost forever,” said Zhang Lei, co-founder of PINWU.
The library is open to the public for free every day. Exhibitions with different themes are held from time to time. Almost everything in the library is created by PINWU designers. Some are for sale.
“What is Chinese design? The key lies in the past. As traditional crafts are disappearing, it is the duty of today’s designers to search for possibilities to give them a new lease of life,” said Goymann.
Address: 156 Wuchang Rd, Yuhang District, Hangzhou
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