Hanneke Lourens’s work is a love letter to her home country of South Africa. She grew up in a small town where creativity wasn’t as venerated as an academically driven path. Though surrounded by artistry (her grandfather being a hobbyist woodworker and her mother a seamstress), Lourens chose to travel after graduating from high school instead of immediately pursuing a profession. That adventure soon turned into a stay in London, where in 2011 she enrolled in a fashion design course that sparked her first career.
When she moved to the U.S. with her husband four years later, visa restrictions prevented her from working right away, so she took up woodworking courses. “While working in fashion, I ended up spending quite a lot of time on my computer, as you do with most jobs these days,” she tells Business of Home. “I really wanted to get back to making stuff with my hands, and that’s what drew me to woodworking. There are so many similarities between designing clothing and woodworking because you are making products for the human body: clothing you wear, and furniture you use and sit on, but it all has to relate to the proportions of humans.”
After completing a full-time woodworking course in Northern California, Lourens found a shared studio space on the Mendocino coast, in a converted cow barn surrounded by redwoods. There, she honed her craft, launching her first collection in May. “It took a few years for me to find my voice,” she says. “I know that sounds a little cliche—but to kind of decide what types of things I want to make and which direction I really wanted to push the design aspect.”
That search led to discovering a passion for designing contemporary pieces inspired by her homeland. “Although I’ve not been living in South Africa for quite a while now, I still feel very close and connected to it,” she says. “This [collection] was kind of like a tribute.” The line, titled Corrugated, is influenced by corrugated iron, a material that’s used widely in the country, especially in urban environments, because of its affordability. Lourens immersed herself in all things South Africa, from music to podcasts. “Once my brain catches an idea, it’s kind of hard to escape it, almost like it’s haunting me,” she says. Those ideas turned to sketches, which turned into models made from wood scraps, which turned into full-size mock-ups using cheap wood, where she works out the joinery and comfort until it reaches the final stage of production—at which point she employs white oak.
The woodworker’s favorite piece was also the first one she designed—a side table that doubles as a stool. She likes it for its simplicity: It’s made up of two corrugated legs held together by a rectangular rail and a circular top. She wanted it to seem like it was put together at the last minute. “I wanted it to invoke a feeling of [being] impromptu, like you just picked up a couple of scraps of metal and plopped a seat on top of it, and now it’s your stool or your side table,” she says. “This idea of things accidentally becoming a piece of furniture.” The collection is made-to-order and can be purchased directly through her website.
On the horizon for Lourens, other than designing her second collection, is developing a newsletter that spotlights African creatives and design. “I feel like African design in general is not really getting the international recognition that it deserves,” she says. “There are so many incredible contemporary African designers and makers, and I don’t think people really know about them.” Starting later this month, she’ll be doing features on furniture and product makers from all over the continent (you can subscribe to the monthly newsletter on her website). The artisan explains, “I’m trying to help do my small part of getting those stories out there into the world.”
To learn more about Hanneke Lourens, check out her website or Instagram.
