Hexagon

During her residency at Crossing Parallels, Eva van Kempen will build on her ongoing practice with the disappearing art of filigree. This technique is an increasingly rare goldsmithing specialisation where jewellery is made from thin, twisted metal wires, resulting in ornate and delicate pieces that are said to be the smallest and most detailed that can be made by human hands.

She is collaborating with scientists from the Mechanical Engineering Department at TU Delft to incorporate modern methods such as waterjet cutting and laser cutting into her practice. The focus is on preserving the essence of traditional filigree by emphasizing material efficiency and retaining the visibility of the handmade process. Rather than replacing craftsmanship, the applied technologies support and amplify it.
At the heart of this approach are modular, hand-assembled filigree units that remain central to the final works. These units are created using Tool-RF (Reproducing Filigree), a mechanical gear-based tool developed by Van Kempen in 2024 in collaboration with Ming Design Studio. Tool-RF enables the precise shaping of metal strips into repeatable filigree forms while maintaining the irregular beauty and material intelligence of traditional techniques.

To expand the scale and potential of filigree, Van Kempen introduces the hexagon as a base shape and uses stainless steel (RVS) as a durable and more affordable material than scarce precious metals. These choices not only enable her to work on a larger scale than is typical for traditional filigree, but also allow for structural versatility. As a result, she envisions future applications that transcend jewellery, branching out into fashion, product design, and other cross-disciplinary contexts.

Her residency at Crossing Parallels is supplemented with a Talent Development Grant from the Creative Industries Fund and is being mentored by fashion designer Tess van Zalinge.

resident

Eva van Kempen

Eva van Kempen (1976) is an experienced goldsmith and jewellery artivist. She holds a BA in HRM, and graduated from an MA from Sandberg Institute. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Europe, Asia and the US and is part of several private and public collections. Van Kempen’s collections reflect her fascination with human potential, specifically related to achievements in the medical and specialised goldsmithing fields.

Part of her practice focuses on craft heritage and filigree, a roughly 5000 year-old ornamental jewellery specialisation, of which she has been a practitioner since 2010. In response to the extinction in the Netherlands of this time-consuming technique, she chose to share basic filigree knowledge-production to encourage a new generation of designers to use filigree in their collections. This led to the creation of 'The Filigree Embassy' with support of Creative Industries Fund NL in 2022. Through this online, open-source platform van Kempen aims to repopularise filigree and safeguards filigree knowledge in collaboration with designers, practitioners, teachers, art historians, and enthusiasts.