TEXTILE HANDICRAFTS FROM HAMBURG

Artistic career and inspiration

The experimental approach to techniques, materials and color aesthetics has occupied me since my studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg. After graduating from university and working independently as a graphic designer for a few years, I finally dared to change direction, which would ultimately be the starting point of my career as an artist and craftswoman.

Inspired by a study trip to Mexico, where I was fascinated by the colorful and special Mexican art of weaving, I decided to learn hand weaving. While training on the handloom, I was able to translate my creative ideas into fabric and discovered a wide and varied range of textile expression. Following my journeyman’s and master’s exams, I opened my studio in Bernstorffstraße in 1983, where I still produce, exhibit and sell my textile art. In such a colorful and diverse district as Hamburg’s Sternschanze, I have felt at home with my artistic work for a long time now and always inspired anew.

Shortly after learning how to weave in my apprenticeship, I began to break the grid of squareness that underlies the weaving process, interpreting and changing the traditional weave individually for myself. The result is the special scarves that are characteristic of my work for many today. The airy scarves look as if they are made of captured threads, sometimes reminiscent of the paintings of Jackson Pollock. Special techniques of textile assemblage, which are not industrially applicable, make each piece unique, which ranks in the border area of art, design and fashion. Also my passion for the reuse and misappropriation of diverse textiles in the sense of textile recycling runs through many of my works, in which the recycling idea is reflected in a creative way. In addition to selling in my store studio and through the
online store
I showcase my scarf designs every year at many different craft fairs, trade shows and exhibitions and now also sell my work through agents in the American and Japanese markets.

Projects

Besides the many different
scarf collections
, which I have designed and produced in the course of my career, I have another passion, which can be attributed primarily to the field of free art. These are artistic textile room objects and wall hangings, which I mostly produce and present in the context of art projects or exhibitions.

Kimono art

My first project in 2003 dealt with the kimono as a cultural artifact and special piece of clothing. The clear kimono shape served me as a projection surface for different textile techniques. The traditional kimonos as pieces of clothing are reinterpreted here and thus themselves become carriers of messages and transmitters of a culture, of different textile techniques and materials. I was able to present my work, among other places, in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe and as part of the exhibition “TRANSIT – Ideen auf der Durchreise” arts and crafts from around the world in the Hamburg Chamber of Crafts.

Object bycatch – Sustainable art

For the exhibitions “Money or Life – Thinking about Sustainability” in the Reinbek Castle, as well as for the special exhibition at the Eunique Karlsruhe “just plastics – new uses”, I dealt with the topic of art made of plastic and created the object “Bycatch”, consisting of plastic waste from the North Sea beach, to criticize increased pollution and to show the relevance of recycling and sustainability.

Window exhibition Networked: Bauhaus weaving reinterpreted

In 2019, I conceived the showcase exhibition “Vernetzt” (Networked) as part of the Hamburg Summer of Architecture, which thematically focused on the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus. Works by the artists Anni Albers, Ruth Hollos and Gunta Stölzl formed the basis of my textile reinterpretations and approaches to the Bauhaus weaving and homage to their women. Within textile surfaces, wall objects, and room dividers, I cited Bauhaus design principles in the form of geometric surfaces draped and attached to a fine grid using the technique of assemblage.

Anarchy and order

As “Hommage à Niki de Saint Phalle” and “Hommage à Sonia Delaunay” I produced textile objects within the framework of this project, which represent a special mixture of anarchically colorful patterned textile elements made of cotton, silk and linen on the one hand and strict geometric forms made of pongé silk and microfiber fabric on the other.

Memories

In the project “Memories” (2012-2014) I have dealt with everyday memories and based on these, the objects: “New Year’s Eve”, “Shopping trip”, “Easter” or “Dream” created. They consist of different materials, which in their shape can be seen as carriers of memories and were woven and sewn into textile surfaces by me. My intention was to create memory objects with which viewers can identify and which they can additionally fill with their own individual memories.

Inspiration Hamburg

The exhibition “Inspiration Hamburg”, the biennial of applied art was held in the Museum of Hamburg History in the fall of 2020. For them I designed, among other things, the object “Ausgelotet”, consisting of more than a hundred meters of natural-colored hemp rope, reminiscent of the classic hand plummet, which was used in the past in seafaring to determine the depth of water. Another of my exhibits for this exhibition is called “Tüüg und Takel” and includes a colorful assortment of textile Hamburgensien, such as scraps of fabric of a Hamburg flag, a FC St.Pauli fan scarf, a fishing shirt from Finkenwerder and much more. My third work, “Stadt am Strom” (“City on the River”), quotes the map of Hamburg and its environs and shows the course of the Elbe from Wittenberge to Cuxhaven with filigree net embroidery. I am very pleased to have been awarded the prize for the best individual piece by the HWK-Hamburg for this object.

Arts and crafts fairs, exhibitions and markets

As an artisan, I am especially happy that apart from selling in my store studio and craft online store, I have also been able to be a guest and present my designs at countless craft shows, markets and fairs over the years. It all began in 1988 with a presentation at the Ambiente and Tendence trade fairs in Frankfurt. This was followed, among others, by the Eunique in Karlsruhe, the Hamburg fair “Kunst und Handwerk” in the Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe, the Advent fair in Koppel 66 and the Grassimesse in Leipzig.

2020

Networked on the pulse of time

Ulrike Isensee receives the “Honorary Award Arts and Crafts – BK Award 2020 for a Lifetime Achievement”.

–> read more

2019

Bauhaus weaving reinterpreted

For a long time, Ulrike Isensee from Hamburg has been known for her imaginative, hand-woven scarves. Her new room dividers, wall objects, assemblages and fabrics are a textile approach to Bauhaus weaving and a tribute to its women.

We talked to the weaver about her Bauhaus homage. –> read more

2018

handmade by Ulrike Isensee

a studio visit by Ute Berger

Two shop windows, between them a door “Open. Please ring”.

I look through the left window: whitewashed and brightly lit, the room points to all the colorful things it houses. On the back wall hangs a collection of striped scarves in clear colors. A black dressmaker’s dummy wears a bright blue capelet – a simple drape to be pulled over the head, made of loosely connected flower tendrils. –> read more