 personal note, Denny and Lester became great grandparents just a few days ago, so hooray for that! Design objects from antiquity up to today radiate colors power. In our current exhibition, saturated the allure and science of color, which I hope you all enjoyed before tonight's program. 190 iconic and innovative objects from our collection and magnificent color treasures and treatises from the Smithsonian libraries brought together for the very first time reveal how designers apply the theories of the world's greatest color thinkers to bring order and excitement to the visual world. The museum is really vibrating these days. Among the historic color manuals on view, the Vina Farben cabinet or color cabinet as it is commonly known is one of the rarest and most fascinating. Only four copies are known to exist in the U.S. Published in Vienna in 1794, the manual contains nearly 3,000 hand colored natural dye specimens as well as instructions for their use. It's a complete compendium of natural colors and an invaluable record of dyes used prior to the discovery of synthetics 65 years later. While the treatises by Sir Isaac Newton and Goethe also on view debate color perception, the color cabinet emphasizes the natural history of color and designs extraordinary efforts to extract color riches from the earth's resources. For tonight's talk, I'm really delighted to welcome back to Cooper Hewitt, the renowned Dutch textile designer and artist and Cooper Hewitt, dear friend, Cloudy Youngstra. Cloudy is deeply engaged in preserving historic colors and dyeing processes, knowledge she has applied to her monumental felt tapestries and textiles installed all over the world. Our 2009 exhibition, Fashioning Felt, featured Cloudy's massive and marvelous site-specific felt installation fabricated with wool from her herd of Drenthe Heath sheep and colored with organic dye plants of earthen browns, fiery reds, and oranges. Visitors were invited to touch, smell, and explore its surfaces as the felt undulated towards the ceiling, suggesting a seismic rupture in the earth's surface. Our collection at Cooper Hewitt holds four of Cloudy's boundary-pushing textiles, two of which were commissioned specifically for us. Her environmentally conscientious approach to textile design, which extends to maintaining a studio and working farm, employing shepherds, spinners, filters, and more, tie Cloudy's designs to nature's cycles. As her practices expanded, she has also dedicated herself to the preservation of skill sets once integral to design and production. The tacit knowledge of dye plants and natural pigments passed down from generation to generation through hands-on learning. Tonight, Cloudy will share her insight gained from years of investigating color and cultivating natural dyes from plants, which she will present in the context of her communitarian and eco-aware philosophy of design. After Cloudy's presentation, we invite you to join us in the Great Hall for a glass of wine and the opportunity to have Cloudy sign her award-winning book, Design in Collaboration with the Econoclastic Book Designer, Irma Boone, who designed the Cooper Hewitt Handbook to the Collection and whose work is also on view and saturated. Printed with a special mix of colors based on the natural ingredients Cloudy uses, the biodegradable inks, chamomile, matter, indigo, and black indigo, are separated and referenced throughout. With matte India paper sewn, but not cut, to emphasize the tactility and homemade qualities of felt textiles, the book is itself an incredibly beautiful design object and reflection of Cloudy's holistic design process. A few months ago when Cloudy showed me the book, we both said, we have to do this at Cooper Hewitt. So we're really happy to be celebrating this gorgeous book tonight. I hope you'll return soon to see more of Cooper Hewitt, including our two other major exhibitions, The Senses, Design Beyond Vision, on the third floor and Access Possibility on the first floor. And I also invite you to join us for what will be an unforgettable celebration on June 13th, our garden party, which will be a color soirée in celebration of saturated with a color environment designed especially for Cooper Hewitt. So now please join me in welcoming to the podium into Cooper Hewitt, Cloudy Youngstra. I was trained as a fashion designer many years ago and I worked in fashion after my graduation. And then four years after working in fashion as a designer, I just really fell over an exhibition on wool felt and that was 20 years ago. I saw that exhibition in Tilburg in the textile museum and it was completely overwhelmed by a architectural form. It was a tent or a shelter. It's called Yurt. And people live in that in these shelters. I was so inspired by the material because I couldn't believe that it resists storms and rains and wind and people live in that for centuries under really rough circumstances. So I quit my job and I just started working only with wool. And now it's 20 years later. So wool is my canvas. It's beautiful to see that so many cultures are very connected to wool. Nomads have made wool felt Yurt's together. It's a communal, you could even say, a ritual. Also famous stories like Joseph Boyce when he was, when he got hit in the war in this airplane. It was crushed. His survival was due to Nomads who found him and he just wrapped him in woolen blankets. I mean, it was, I mean, it's such an important, yeah, I mean, it has such an impact if that material just saves your life in a sense. So what's so fascinating about wool? I mean, when I saw it for the first time, I just could not wait to go into experimenting and since I had my background as an artist, I just combined many materials with that wool felt. And if you can see on the, you see that wool has this completely different structure as all the other fibers. It has these layers and that makes wool felt so incredibly genius because when you would put water to this structure, these small things, they open up. And just by ribbing or friction or a mechanical rubbing process, they intertwine. So we have this fiber very loose. And after five minutes, you would have a cloth. And I was so inspired also by this, you know, it's basic, very simple method just only using your hands and water. And then you would have, you know, in seconds you would have a fabric. Because of that special structure, wool has also the qualities in a spectrum like it's warm insulating. I mean, it keeps you cool in summer. It's dirt repelling. It's not flammable. I mean, acoustic qualities, fantastic material in itself. So wool is, it has a geniality on its own. And all the wool comes, I mean, the wool I use come from a very typical sheep. It's called drain heat. It's the oldest species from Northern Europe. And there are only 1200 left in the world. There are really very tiny, but they have this great fur, this great coat of wool. But there is not much meat on them, so they were not used for meat production. They were used many, many years. They were used for landscape preservation to fertilize the soil in a natural way. That's the quality of the sheep. They live and they work. I mean, we use them for maintaining landscape, for vegetation management. That's the reason why we would keep them, of course, also for the wool. And they live in this heat land, combined with some low bush land and trees. So the three biotopes make that the quality of the sheep and the quality of the wool, that it's fantastic. So this is where they live, and it's really rare also in the Netherlands to have this land. This is the northern part of the Netherlands, very close to the sea. And with a slightly small, here. This is where the sheep are working and living. And it's very close to a province, here. It's called Drenth. And that's why the sheep are called Drenth heat. So the heat refers to the land and Drenth to the location. And you can see already that there's a very rich variety of land with flora and fauna. And because the shepherd's role is not go out and just take the sheep. But he is really, I mean, he is an orchestra of how the sheep work on that land. So they keep the balance between the heath and also the forest. And by doing this, I mean, following a specific, you could say a specific diet from the sheep. They maintain this landscape in a beautiful balance. So you have a great biodiversity also here. Reptiles and birds and insects are exuberant in that landscape. That has also an effect on the wool quality. Besides, they also get this, yeah, they get a lot of herbs too. So the quality of the wool, besides that it has a long texture, is also very, yeah, for wool felting, it's fantastic. Another aspect for this specie is that the shepherd keeps the stress. And the energy level really, I would say, low. How do you do that? So when it's really warm, he takes them to these places where there are trees. But also the shearing is normally a really big stress factor. And we have this very gentle man who shears them really soft and kindly. And also when you can also imagine when you take off that woolen fur, I mean, they feel completely naked, unprotected. So we keep them in quarantine for a few days. So in small groups that they are not alone, they really adjust to their new appearance. And then they go naturally into that herd. But you cannot believe it has an impact on the quality of the wool. So where does the wool go? So when I started 20 years ago, I started experimenting. And then the first five, six years, I only worked in naturals. So what you see here, just fabrics clothed, I mean, not with a certain purpose. I just started working, developing textures and experimenting. And just found my way in that material. Here, pieces for residences, but also, this is in the collection of the kopewit. And also this piece is also in the collection of the kopewit. So the first pieces I made were really very organic. I had no distraction from color. So I could completely focus just on the material itself. And then very slowly, first, architectural projects came. Here, it is a ceiling in a residence. The purpose of the wool was acoustics. So it's all covered by this material. Really, I mean, nothing was hidden, just the material, very raw used on its own. And I just heard from a professor connected to the University of Utrecht, his name is Sven Dupree, and he said, to learn a skill, to master a skill, it takes 20,000 hours to learn it. I think I took 20,000 hours to learn, make a fabric in a neutral color. So it's also the time frame, 20,000 hours is also seven years. And seven years is also this master apprentice relationship. It takes so long, I mean, to really have the material in your hands that it's like, you know, that you can do anything with it. Here you see a work I made for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It's a mural with many elements in the composition. And the work is called Earth, Arden. And I wanted to show really the treasure of nature in that work. Residential pieces, also offices. This is quite a spectacular building in the Netherlands. It's a municipality, it's a conference room, it's like a chapel, it's a cathedral. We work a lot with acoustic engineers, too. And I mean, there is no, when you are in that space, it's really like a shelter, it's really like, you could say, a yurt. This is a beautiful project with Todd Williams and BDG Architects. It took us, I think, three years really to work from first sketches, dialogue, dialogue with the hand carved stone, to really make it into one harmonious consensus in these, I don't know how many, but there are many, I mean, I think there are 12 or 14 monochromes. It also reflects to the specific light in the light quartz at the Barnes Foundation. And when the day is going by, also the works they change, it's like a waterfall. And I think it's a beautiful example of working together with architects from a very early start, not being, at a later moment, an application in the building, but really being part of the building, too. And then after these seven years, I think it was time for another step. It was time for color. I also felt in that period I was very hesitant using the color because it was a domain I was not used to. And at the moment I discovered the quality and the vitality and the ripeness of natural dyes. So that's why I started very slowly, I started experimenting with materials I found, forage, and that was the first step into working with colors coming from nature. This is an installation two years ago in a museum in the Netherlands. And it's an art installation. It contains, I think, 300 of these jars referring to food, but also they have a plant in it. All of them are artworks on their own. And the plant refers to the dye and the material in it is also a fiber, it's wool or silk or brand heat. And together I think it shows the spectrum of working with these materials. It has a variety, I mean, it's unbelievable. I just saw this incredible Viennese color cabinet and I completely understand, I mean, that you get lost when you work with these materials. We have periods that people work, assistants or interns that they work on a color palette. For example, we had an assistant working for six months only on St. John's Worth. And there was a palette of, I think, 500 different variations only working with one plant, can you imagine? What's interesting when you make the dyes is that it's really like it's a nonverbal way of, you know, hands on experimenting. And it was always difficult for us in the last years. How do you document a recipe? I mean, how do we define or archive, I mean, all these hundreds of recipes we have developed over the last, I mean, 10 years. So in collaboration now with Professor Sven-Dupré and the University of Utrecht, we are developing new recipes referring to 15th century old documentation and also they are helping us how to archive our recipes that they are accessible for future generations. Because also with the dye process, it's really complex because there are so many variables making that recipe. It's not the harvest only, but it's the temperature of the water. Or it's, I don't know, I mean, how many times people are stirring in the bath. You know, it's, I don't know, it's so much. So you have to be really alert when you make these color ranges. And it's also about, you know, how do you value color? I mean, in that conversation we are now also with the university. In the 15th century in Europe, Antwerp was the capital, you could say, of textile dye. I mean, from England and France, many crops and plants that were just brought to Antwerp because it has, of course, because of the delaying, because of the harbor. And they were from England and France, that was the vote. And people really had an incredibly knowledge of how to make these dyes, not only for textiles, but also for painters. And you can see also here in the painting on the right, the reference to the color palette we are using. So also from the 15th century, painters used these pigments in the same pigments we are using now. So it's very interesting also because we get also it's important, in that sense also for the archive, I mean, if you want to restore the painting of Vermeer Rembrandt, you need to know how the paints are being made. So we feel an urge to really work on that. Before you paint or dye, there is a more than process. You make, in fact, you make the fiber. You make it accessible or easy to adjust to color. We do that with natural, with a natural mordant. And we do that with walnut. So walnut can be foraged, can be found. And it gives also a really nice base for all the color palettes. So it's really warm. So the colors we develop are having always this richness and this warmth inside of them. This is the oldest dye plant in Europe. It's called Weld. It's very bright. We use a stem, leaf, and flower. And they give this enormous, vivid and a bit, you know, happy yellow. This is also in the collection of the Coupe de Huit, this piece. And you can also express many tones also working with these plants. We use the same plant in this project. It's the library of Amsterdam. And we use here also for the pattern. It's a knotting technique from the 17th century. We redeveloped it. It was originally used in an underdress as a color. And we just scaled it up because when you see that knot, it's like a crossing point. And the library of Amsterdam is situated at the harbor of Amsterdam. So also we refer in the texture and in the design to historical references on patterns or knotting techniques. And so for this, we use a lot of hand-span yarns. So we have also a lot of spinners from the area, people who work with us. And you can also say that it's a lot of hand labor. It takes a lot of time making all these processes. This is a conference room, panels with big movements. I mean, it's a rich palette only in wealth color. This is also very interesting color. It's called boat. It's the European, you could say the European indigo. We grow them also in the north because we have the combination of the light in the north because of the influence of the sea is really bright and really intense. And the combination with the clay makes that even an indigo or flax and even the Asian indigo, we also grow it because of the natural existence of nature, of the light and of the clay. In the boat we use, we grow it and when we harvest it in the fall, the leaves, we just make it small and then by just a fermenting process, it takes four months, they conserve. And then if you would like to reveal the color out of these conserved elements, by oxidation, this color appears, so the color is inside and by a process of water and the right temperature and getting the oxygen out of the dye bud, the color gets on the material just by just putting it out of the dye bud. In this material itself, the color stays for 400 years. So it's really, yeah, it's a very, it's a word without any meaning anymore, but it's sustainable. So the colors go really well in modern environment but also in these 18th century museum chambers. They go really well with the China and they harmonize. The colors also have, I mean, tots at once to me, the work in the color palette has no ego. I think that's right because it goes its own way. It harmonizes with the environment. This is a piece, it's an artwork made out of Asian indigo and also very intense. You can mix rich palettes and the indigo has, yeah, this type of blue is, I mean, it's incredible rich and you really get lost when you look at that color. Residential pieces, too, and this was a work we put in a garden. Two years ago we made a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. I don't know if you know it, but it's really, in Europe it's a big thing. I mean, four million people watched the BBC and I think we had a garden there. We had a Dyer's garden and we won Silver Guild, which means not guild, but because we were debutants and not British and the reason we didn't, that was the reason we didn't win gold, but they were really shocked by the, we had put nettle in the garden. And nettle is a classical dye plant. I mean, the royal tweets are made out of nettle color, but also people forget about it, but nettle, I mean, it's not a plant you usually will put in a garden. So it was really also funny. This is a work we made last year. It's Penn University in Philadelphia. It's in the library also. And the work is called Fields of Transformation. It's a triptage. So this is, yeah, this is one of the three. It's the biggest piece we ever made. It's 16 meters, six high. We rented a school for it. And it was really interesting also because it's a one-piece fabric. And if you imagine that Wolfeld is a shrinking process, we, you have to make like 30% more. So it's really an incredibly big piece. So it's site-specific work. It refers to, the neutrals refer to, I mean, what's in the library. It's a source. It's the legacy. The blues, the indigos here, they refer to intellect. And if you would combine sources and also intellect, you need, I think, empathy, warmth. And the yellows made out of waste, waste of onion skins. They develop a very rich palette of golden color. So the three together, it's called the Fields of Transformation. A recent work installed at the U.S. Embassy in Wassenar, near the Hague. It's an interesting work because the briefing of the architect was to make really an autonomous work, but also it could have a message inside. And it's called the metamorphosis of the butterfly, referring, of course, to the blue, to the indigo. When the color comes on that fiber, it really has a, yeah, it's because of oxidation that color comes. You could say it's a metamorphose. And also, I mean, if you would look on a human or a more psychological aspect of metamorphosis, you could say also when people are in development or in growth, I mean, it's always important that you still be open for new influences or that you are willing to change or willing to develop. So that's also in that work implicit. The implicit message in that work is, yeah, it's a way that people, if you would like to be in development, that you would be open for changes. A lot of hand stitching to embroideries really emphasizing the dynamics of a movement. This is a color we also use a lot. It's called matter. Matter is a plant. The root is, that's where the color comes from. Matter is one of the oldest dye plants also. I mean, there were also diggings from Pompeii, but also in Mexico, but in graves of Tutankhamun, people found rest materials of matter. And it takes three years for the plant to grow and then two years of drying. So it takes five years before you have that color. So you can believe it's really a richness, which is incredible in time. I think it's something you, I mean, this is the oldest, the only plant who has this long-term development. The palette is also incredible. This is the work, I mean, the part of the process for a work for that exhibition, Fashioning Felt. And this is also how you can see how I make the work. I mean, I work on a table and just putting out, I mean, carton materials on the left. This is a lot of work. We comb all the materials. I mean, this is my painter's palette, you can say, and then composing it in a constellation. And then here, later on, water is being added to it. The fibers open up, and then by a mechanical friction process, they intertwine. You have that fabric. 15th century paintings, Jan van Eyck, you see, I mean, it's not a red, it's matter. And the Dutch were, I mean, we were famous for this color. I mean, because of the soil we have, it was in the Netherlands, it was in the 17th century, it was our most famous export product because of that. This is not site-specific work. It's an installation. It's a nomadic installation, meaning that it's a work which will travel. I started with developing ideas about making a not-specific artwork three years ago, and it's just been exposed in the Netherlands because we are in the North, we are part of cultural capital at the moment. And the work is called Woven Skin, Woven referring to connecting to communities, to different topics, and skin, really, there are 60 skins forming this artwork. The skins, I mean, what is a skin? A skin, you could also say, a skin is a protector. I mean, a skin is your shield. And the work, you know, breathes out being a protector for ecology, tested knowledge, and community. So it will travel. It will also come to New York, but first it will go to Palermo, Sicily, in 10 days. It will be part of Manifesta 12, and we will have site programming too. We will do educational programming, with, for example, Bangladeshi women. They have a fantastic way of weaving. I mean, they have incredible qualities in weaving coral into their fabrics, but also communities from Nigeria. We will work with high school young children. I mean, also see how they express themselves into working with their hands. This is a painting from Rembrandt. This is Anish Kapoor, and this is just recently discovered in February. It's the oldest Neanderthaler artwork in a Spanish cave. So it's very interesting. Also already in that time, I mean, people had these same related pigments. The work also travels to New York. I already said it during climate week. We will have a lineup with speakers, dialogues, panels, people who are involved and connected to the studio. There is a card on your seat. You can also see the program there. And after that, we will go to, it's the end of September, we will go to Soma Center for Food and Agriculture, and we will do a weekend programming there, foraging, making a lot of incredible colors. I give a lecture to, and you can find information also on that card. The landscape in the Netherlands was dominated in that 17th century by these barns. These were drying barns for the matter. So the root state of the two years before they were used for these color pallets. The studio in the Netherlands is in the north. It's 40 minutes from the sheep, because we have different lands there. And next to my Dias Lab, we have a collection garden. In that collection garden, we shelter 70 to 80 different species of plants and herbs, historical. Some are very rare, indigenous. Just the purpose of that garden is to connect to the dyers directly, because if they die, I think it's important that they see where the material comes from, that they can also make drawings of the plants that they just see how the plant develops. And also it's interesting sometimes if we have visitors to see how different plants, how they develop. This is a work for a restaurant, referring to food, edible dyes are being used in this work too. So it's very important that the plants we grow, that they have a relationship with the soil. So we don't grow exotic plants. Plants don't belong. They have to be rooted in the land or in the landscape. So the matter is one of them. And also the indigo, they do really well in our environment. We also grow flax, not specifically for dying, but since this year, we are part of a curriculum in a university, a fashion department, and the program is called rooted textiles. So we will have, in September, we will have students coming to us and they will work from the flax plant to a yarn. I mean, how do you do that? And there are only, I think in the Netherlands, only five people who still know how to do that. Also the materials, how to make a yarn from this flax plant is very interesting. So they're changing now in the Netherlands, more and more curricula, because it's important to understand your source, when you are a fashion designer, it's important, if you work with a linen fabric, at least I think it's interesting that you understand how much effort it takes, I mean, also how to produce it. So we are in the middle of this. I mean, these are our neighbors. This is what happens in the Netherlands, I think also globally. We call it green desert. It's due to industrialization. The land is really, I mean, and also artificial fertilization. This is how the landscape in the North looks like. It's monoculture. There are no flowers. There are no bees. I mean, there's nothing. And we had bees and also die, I mean, because there's nothing for the bees to eat also. So we thought it's important to, I mean, we cannot change the North, but we can also, at least we can do is make an impact on the landscape. So we do that here. We have a farm. So the small black thing, the dot is our farm. We have a nursery there where we grow also from sea to plant. And here at the farm, we have a variety of vegetation, diascamomile, but I think also a lot of different species. We work on the land. We plow with horses, no machines, because also due to intense machinery on the land, I mean, in the Netherlands, when we have rain and we have a lot of rain, I mean, we have the level of the water in the land is really too high. So it really floods over. So it's not that we want to go back to the medieval time, that we want to show also, I mean, a different way of, and also different economical models if you potentialize spaces and landscapes. The variety we harvest, a lot of crops, sunflowers you use, not only the seeds, but also the flowers. And here is the glass house I spoke about, the nursery. It's from Belgium. It's a 20th century glass house. It was the last of, I think, five and we could rescue it. There are a thousand glasses in that glass house. And what we do there is we, because we have a lot of wind and rain, I mean, it's really hard also for plants or seeds to really develop. So we grow them and then they go. We have a collaboration now with eight farmers in the area in the north. And so the small plants go to these farmers in the north here. And the whole idea is that we scale up, I mean, not in the farm, because we want to work together with farmers and the crops are alternative crops for monoculture. And we would like to increase these crops too, because it's important that the landscape in the Netherlands, I mean, in the north, I mean, we have to radically change. So the crops are being used for the artworks, but also very new is that we have, we have developed, we're working on the development together. I don't know, maybe some of you would know it. It's called TIGLA, MOKEM. It's an old ceramic company in the Netherlands, quite famous. It's the oldest company in the Netherlands, I mean, 200 years old. So we are making natural glazes from the crops. So it's really interesting because it's a Japanese tradition and we hope that we have the collection ready next year. So then the farmers are really motivated also to produce more of these crops. I think I'm nearly to the end. Questions? We have time. Oh, okay. So we have time for a couple of questions from the audience before we head back upstairs for the book signing, and we are going to ask that you use a microphone. So if you have a question for Claudia, please just raise your hand and I will run the mic to you. What's the most difficult color to get from nature? Sorry? What's the most difficult color to get from nature? The color. Difficult, hardest. The matter. The matter is quite difficult because it's so explicit. I mean, you can make a, you saw the palette of reds, but really the intense matter, it's quite complex and also desolates that color of that root because it was in there for five years and that's really, really very difficult. Thank you. That was fabulous. Thank you. I want to know, can you say more about how you tap into the tacit knowledge? How do you record it? Do you have protocols? Do you have, I mean, you... Yeah, it's also, I mean, it's tacit knowledge. I mean, it's also very personal. So how do you transfer knowledge and how do you define, how do you articulate? I mean, how do we store that knowledge? So sometimes we learn from elderly people or from people with a different background. Sometimes we learn from students, I mean, we had students from India, it's in their DNA. I mean, they have a different perspective of how to make colors. I mean, I think they heard from parents and grandparents in their tradition. I mean, when they said together, I mean, they share stories. So when we, once we had a student from India and she was working on a color and she went out with a pot and in the sun and out and you know, we had no clue. I mean, but after, I think, two weeks, she made this incredibly color. I mean, you could describe, we have no words for that, even defining a color in a language is even also difficult. But so we said to her, I mean, can we make it repetitive? I mean, that's also interesting. I mean, we have to, yeah, we should be able to redo it again with a new crop. So always finding ways to, yeah, to archive experiences. That's very personal. It's really complex. When we read now also recipes from the 15th century, you cannot repeat it. It's very complex because there is a lot of information missing. And this is the essence of developing a program of that missing information because it's a personal, you know, expertise or I mean, or luck or a crop in the year, you know. So, yeah, to get a finger on it is really complex. Yeah. Do you know about the making a knowing project at Columbia, which is doing that very same thing with knowledge from 15th century? I heard about it, yeah. Yeah, I heard about it. Yeah, it's really hard to record it and archive it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to connect to that too. Yeah. Any other questions? I had a question just about the volume of the production that you're doing because your pieces are extremely large and obviously you're talking about the difficulty of matching color and how many batch, dye batches are you making of a single thing that you're obviously achieving a match and it just seems, obviously you're saying it's hard and it seems incredibly astounding that you can do that and the kind of difference of serendipity of when you see something that is really successful in working saying, oh, wow, we're going in a new direction because of this, but can we replicate in scale? So, if you could talk about the volume of your scale. It's an interesting question because when we start working in a small dye lab, we had this, you know, how do you say this, really not too large pots and then for the project for the library of Amsterdam, we had developed tailor-made really huge dye bath, like you could say semi-industrial, but putting more material in the dye bath, I mean, when you have a recipe and you scale up, I mean, with factor, I don't know, a thousand, it doesn't specifically mean that you get the same color, so that's what we developed. So, we did that, but the color was completely different. So, then we scaled back again the batches of 100 grams because I think you have some kind of control on it too because this really huge dye bath where you could put, I mean, 30 or 40 kilos of material in, it was difficult to, how do you say, to control because it would go to the bottom, it would burn a bit, I mean, so it didn't mean, I mean, more or bigger but it was not specifically more effective. So, now we work with, you know, small portions and that works really best. I mean, there's a lot of time too, but the quality of the material is more effective at the end. But since we have, I mean, the whole process is in the studio, so people are very often surprised about our lead times. For U-Pen at work, it took us only, I think, a few months making it because the dyes can work today and I mean, the crops have been harvested. I mean, we don't have to wait for suppliers. I mean, we're completely independent so that makes that the lead time is relatively short. Do you have a breeding program for your sheep? Yes, there is. You said there were so few still in existence. Yeah, but the difficulty of the Netherlands is that we are really small. We are such a small country. So, we have to maintain the quantity because the heat land is very rare. So, it's also a challenge too because, I mean, we would like to scale up, but the Netherlands, I mean, it's tiny. It's tiny. So, the essence is that we keep the breeds really, you know, healthy and that, yeah, that it exists and that it maintains. I was just asking because of climate change, how it's affecting your plants from year to year. Yeah, the farm, I mean, we work on a biodynamic, how do you say, ground. So, we have rotation systems. So, until now, the vitality is still really good and we are, I mean, we didn't have these really dry summers and these really cold winters. I mean, I think it's changing also in the Netherlands now, but for now, I think we're really good. But for future, I don't know, but I think we have to experiment with it too and then we have to adjust, I think, some of the crops to the new climate, yeah. I'm just wondering about your team and how diverse it is in terms of scientists and, you know, naturalists and people. It just seems like it's so, it must be very large. I'm curious how you develop your team. That's very different. And we have designers. We have sometimes architects. We have writers. It's very diverse, not specifically trained as a textile artist, but more people who are, yeah, very interested to connect to the practice of the studio. We have farmers, but we have also some social workers because we have also a social program. We developed in 2014. We have a group of young children working on the farm doing art programs, so we have also a social aspect to the studio. It's very holistic, you can say. So, but more and more, unfortunately, there are more and more people on publicity branding and marketing than in the workshop because, yeah, that changes too. I mean, when I started working with my material, I mean, people expect more. I mean, we really have a concept. I mean, the clients they want to see, I mean, virtualized in the space. I mean, it's also due to a lack of imagination, I think sometimes. So, it's been hard also to, I mean, it's difficult to be changed, I think, in that sense. So, it's very narrative what we do. You have to sell it, you have to say, this is like a wine. You have to value the color. In 2017, the wealth was more, you know, greenish. 2018, you have, it has a different tone. So, you have to, you know, educate also people. We have time for one or two more questions. I wanted to ask about your normal day and what that looks like. Like, when are you on a farm? When are you making artwork? When are you researching and reading? When are you thinking and when are you, like, talking with other thinkers? 5.30, I'm up. One of the fantastic things is working in this, you know, rural setting is no shops, shops, nothing. I mean, so, we are completely focused on the work. So, it's really effective too. But I admit that I very often work in the weekend when I'm alone. And then, I mean, I still make these artworks. I mean, the handwriting, that's still my contribution to the artwork. All the processes before, like the cardings and the spinnings and all these processes. I mean, that's a teamwork. It's a community work, you could say. But I still have, I mean, I love to work in the workshops. I mean, seeing, developing colors and also giving a feedback on it or when we work on a project, working with a team of designers. So, yeah, it's very collaborative. But I have my evenings and my weekends when I close myself up and just, you know, need time to reflect and to work alone in the workshop. It's very full with a lot of activities too. But also, you could say more and more focused because I think it's interesting because for, yeah, for my harem, we have developed, connected to the project, a fantastic range of, we call it the biodiversity rugs. They will be launched also in the fall. And also new color ranges and new color palettes have developed. More contemporary color palettes. What is a contemporary color? So it was also interesting to have dialogues about my team and also with you. I mean, how does a contemporary color look like? I mean, so it's interesting. It's very diverse. Workday is really very layered in practically hands-on work or reflecting with the team and, yeah, think of the new perspective. So, yeah, very, very different. Sometimes in the farm, bread baking too or helping out. But, yeah, also keeping a bit of a focus also especially for this project now. Hi, it was really fascinating. I'm really interested in the relationship between the tectonic wall, the actual wall and the textile art as the wall covering. Especially when you talk about site-specific textile art and you cover the modern architecture with very locally rooted artwork. Do you see something symbolic in that or what do you think about the relationship? I think one of the most, yeah, I would say complete works is when you are in a dialogue with the architect from the beginning of a project. So then you can really, yeah, it's not an application. I mean, very often it's an application in the building because I think 80% of the projects are about, you know, for example, we do a lot of hospital work in the Netherlands, concert institutions and very often in these kind of spaces or environments. I mean, people feel that they're really cold or inhuman or using the materials not really appropriate for these spaces. I mean, a building like a space where you have to wait before treatment. I mean, how does it look like? So very often after a building has been constructed or after people have been using a building, they come to us and say, I mean, can you do something about the atmosphere or the acoustics? So I can say these are not the best examples of my work. But we do our best and try not to make a big impact also, I mean, on the architecture because it's already existing. So we work really well when you have all the materials of the architecture, the philosophy of the architecture, the briefing of a building or even, you know, yeah, especially for example when you have a work in that library at Penn. I mean, it's also about education. I mean, so the work should breathe out or even, I mean, that's students who come there, that they are curious and that they ask questions about the work. It's also very interactive in a sense. So it depends very much also on the different, you know, buildings. So hospital work or restaurant, I mean, it's also about, you know, making a space very appealing and I don't mean that in a luxurious way, but also about the curiosity, I think. Where do the colors come from? What is the story behind it? And you want to, I think it's interesting that people are, yeah, questioning themselves and also because these colors or materials are not naturally in our environment anymore. So making an impact on a small way in the building. Thank you, Claudia and thank you everyone for joining us this evening. We welcome you all to continue the conversation upstairs in the Great Hall over a glass of wine. Claudia will be signing copies of her new book, which are also available in the shop.