Mareike works as a multidisciplinary designer and chose the traditional craft of Japanese woodblock printing as one of her signature practices.
During an artist-in-residence program in 2013 in Japan, the idea for the blog Craftsmanship Soul started to develop.
Here I learned about the urgency to keep the traditional craft of Mokuhanga alive despite my own nationality and cultural heritage. That passing on skill does not stop at geographical borders.
Further, I observed the relevance of understanding different aspects of one craft and also importantly other crafts that are closely connected to it. With Mokuhanga the knowledge of papermaking and tool making such as brushes and carving knives is creatively, historically, economically and culturally linked and as important as the craft of printing. The residency taught me that the complexity of one craft is not in isolation that it is not just in its skills and tradition, but also in a wider context.
With this in mind, I want to establish a platform for modern crafts that reaches out internationally to learn and get inspired by each other.