Anna Sipkema (1877–1933) was a Dutch graphic designer and textile artist. She is known mainly today for her book covers and calendars.

Early life and education

Sipkema was born in the village of

Mensingeweer Mensingeweer is a small village in the Netherlands; it is located in the municipality of Het Hogeland, Groningen. It lies on the provincial road from Winsum to Leens at the crossroads to Eenrum. The long-distance footpath called '' Pieterpad' ...

in the Groningen province of the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Her family was devoutly Mennonite; her father was a minister. Sipkema studied at the Rijksnormaalschool voor Tekenonderwijzers in Amsterdam from 1894 to 1897, from the time she was seventeen until age twenty. Six years later, in 1903, she obtained her teaching certificate.

Career

She began teaching at the Dagtekenen Kunstambachtsschool voor Meisjes (Day Drawing and Craft School for Girls in Amsterdam) in 1904. While teaching, Sipkema found work in Amsterdam as a commercial artist, designing calendars, illustrations, bindings, and covers for books coming from publishers such as C.A.J. van Dishoeck, G.B. van Good, P.H. van Kampen, and others, as well as her own

batik Batik is an Indonesian technique of wax-resist dyeing applied to the whole cloth. This technique originated from the island of Java, Indonesia. Batik is made either by drawing dots and lines of the resist with a spouted tool called a ''ca ...

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...

s, and

ceramic A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

s. She also exhibited and sold her work at galleries such as De Kerkuil gallery in Haarlem, where she sold textiles and cushions in 1925. After this period, she found work mainly as a weaver, hand weaving sometimes in very fine materials, like silk, and with Scandinavian influences In 1907 she became a full member of the

Nederlandsche Vereeniging voor Ambachts- en Nijverheidskunst The Nederlandsche Vereeniging voor Ambachts- en Nijverheidskunst (V.A.N.K.) (Dutch Association for Craft and Industrial Art) was founded in 1904. It was founded by Jacob Pieter van den Bosch, Herman Hana, Klaas van Leeuwen, Theo Molkenboer, and W ...

, or VANK, which she had been working towards since her application in 1905. Sipkema turned away from the literary world and focused on weaving at the end of the decade, in her personal work as well as her teaching, and would continue with that path until her death in 1933.

Works

Sipkema is most widely remembered for her Art Nouveau flower-and-leaf calendars for the publishing house of C.A.J. van Dishoek and her bookbindings from the first decade of the twentieth century.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sipkema, Anna 1877 births 1933 deaths Dutch graphic designers Dutch women graphic designers 20th-century Dutch women educators 20th-century Dutch educators People from Het Hogeland