Inside the workshop where 600-year-old loom techniques meet contemporary design
The workshop is on a narrow canal street, three floors above the water. There is no sign. You learn the address from someone who learned it from someone else. Inside, the air smells of wet flax and machine oil — a particular combination that has not changed in six centuries.
"The loom does not care what century it is. It only knows tension, thread, and time."
Hendrik De Wolf is sixty-three. His father learned weaving here; his grandfather before that. He is one of three men in Belgium who can still operate a traditional Flemish draw loom — a machine that requires two operators and four hands to produce a single centimetre of cloth per hour.
The River Lys, which runs south of Bruges into France, once processed more flax than any waterway in Europe. The water had a particular mineral quality that rotted the stalk away perfectly, leaving only the long bast fibres. The word "linen" itself likely comes from the Latin for the Lys region. The trade built the city.
By 1950, industrial mills in France and Belgium could produce in a day what Hendrik's loom makes in a month. By 1980, most traditional workshops had closed. By 2000, there were perhaps a dozen weavers left who understood the draw loom system. Today, there are three.
"Each piece we make carries a specific tension signature. No machine can replicate it. The cloth remembers the maker's hands."
Stargater began working with Hendrik's workshop in 2022, after our founder spent three days watching him weave before asking whether he would consider a small production run. The answer, after some consideration, was yes — provided we agreed never to rush an order and never to ask him to simplify a pattern.
There is an apprentice now — a twenty-eight-year-old from Ghent named Lore, who left a career in graphic design to learn the draw loom. Hendrik says she has good hands and an unusual patience. She will be ready in three more years. The continuity is not guaranteed, but it is possible.
The Stargater Linen Overshirt is woven in this workshop. Each piece requires approximately fourteen hours of loom time.