2025

LINEN FIBER INITIATIVES

Prof. Renata Brink MA / HAW Hamburg

With a global fiber production of less than 5%, linen—a plant-based bast fiber—is used primarily for clothing and home textiles. Until the late 19th century, it was, alongside wool, one of Europe’s most important fibers. Since then, however, both its production and the associated knowledge—cultivation, harvesting, processing, and spinning—have largely shifted away from Europe.

Against this backdrop, the focus here is on projects that engage with linen both conceptually and materially, aiming to bring it back into public awareness and to recover lost expertise. The project 1squaremeterflax, first launched in Sweden in 2020, has since grown into a transnational initiative with networks across multiple countries. It enables communities, craftspeople, artists, and others to access hands-on knowledge and practice-based expertise in flax cultivation and fiber processing—from “seed to shirt.” The initiative lokaltextil even wove a textile from the harvest of a single square meter of flax.

The textile design seminar FLAX +++ explored different ways of “reading” linen, examining its multiple layers of meaning. It began with familiar technical considerations surrounding textile fibers and culminated in a participatory workshop organized by the students.