Welcome to Helena's part of the site !

From a very young age onwards Helena was interested in and worked with many materials, like textile, glass, wood, steel and silver. She studied jewelry design and silversmithing at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp and afterwards at the Royal College of Art in London. It now looks as if silver as a means for her creative expression is predominating.

Helena's playing with shadows produces brilliant work with an almost poetic quality. In some of her vessels she makes a refined pattern with holes which creates an effect of light and shadow on the surface the vessel sits on. Her works show a beautiful mix of concept and craftsmanship.

Helena about her work : "It is the working process I enjoy immensely : to raise a threedimensional volume from a flat metal sheet, feeling the form emerging underneath my hands.

Then the first drilling of a hole in a finished hammered work. A moment of pure magic : it is at that point that the solid sheet comes to life for me. By literally taking away a piece of material something is added to the object in the figurative sense. It is about 'removing' yet at the same time 'filling' : the surface is taken up by a pattern.

A lot of my inspiration is derived from nature. At the moment I focus on a wonderful micro-organism that lives in the water, called a 'diatom'. Its beautiful patterns became an endless source for my series of silver Hole Bowls."