about

Fay Oberdorf is a textile designer and design historian based in Breda, the Netherlands and Borås, Sweden.
In her textile works she utilizes the natural behavior of materials and manipulates traditional textile construction methods in an attempt to elevate two dimensional textiles. Her textile materials are built up into three dimensional, multilayered structures, playing with transparency and tactility.

  • June 2024 - present

    Product development for both circular and flatbed knitted upholstery fabrics.

  • November 2023 - Januari 2024

    As a guest research at the Materialising Futureslab of TU Delft, I researched contemporary knitting techniques for a well known yoga brand on a Stoll knitting machine and researched 3D weaving techniques on a TC2 loom.

  • October 2023

    In october I did a one-month work period in Stadsgalerij Witte Rook, Breda. During this period I was one of the three artists working in the gallery.
    An article about our work appeared on their website.

  • August 2023 - present

    Broad support to the Art Collection Manager in the field of management and conservation of the art collection. The organization has an art collection that mainly consists of international, contemporary visual art from young makers as well as established names and a number of old masters. The collection includes paintings, glass, sculptures, photography and multimedia works of art.

  • June 2021 - Present

    A Royal Palace in The Hague I take care of the preservation of the contemporary textile collection and conduct research about the textile pieces.

  • January 2018 - August 2023

    At Museum Bredius I was involved in the registration, preventive preservation of the museum collections and the construction and dismantling of exhibitions. During corona I curated the physical presentation of the 17-century drawings and etches by Rembrandt van Rijn on the first floor and was involved in a large transparency project, registering our applied arts collections in Adlib and online.

  • January 2019 - July 2019

    After writing my thesis about the women of the weaving workshop of the Bauhaus in Dessau, I interned at the textile museum in The Netherlands. As the right hand of curator Caroline Boot I planned the exhibition showcases, wrote exhibition texts and worked in registration software Adlib.

  • June 2018 - September 2018

    For the 40th anniversary of the industrial design agency npk design in Leiden, I worked as the curator of the retrospective exhibition, in which the developments of the office and tis position in the field of industrial design were presented. Here I selected the content, did design historical research, wrote the object texts, design the exhibition spaces and worked in the construction and dismantling of the exhibition.

experience

  • September 2020 - September 2024

    This program conducts in-depth research into the role, relevance and techniques of textiles in societies of the past, present and future. With this BA I try to unite my analytical knowledge of design history with a more technical understanding in order to develop a personal and authentic handwriting in the broad frame of textile design.

  • 2015 - 2020

    Specialization: Applied Arts & Design

    Minor: Fashion Industry at Erasmus University Rotterdam

    Bachelor Thesis: “The Bauhaus Weaving Workshop - Textiles, Architecture and technology as a ‘new unity’.

  • 2017 - 2018

    This course consists of a basic weaving course and a professional weaving course with an emphasis on weaving fashion, interior and consumer textiles.

education