Last week I was in NYC for a whirlwind trip to see friends, family, and table at an art fair that went really well. Except when I got horrible news right before my last two days of tabling work.
I learned from
Claudine Latron that on July 16, we lost the inimitable
Serge Pirard, a Belgian mould maker who worked directly in the English mould making tradition, trained by the late Ron Macdonald.
Serge would have been 50 yesterday (Sept 10) and left us far too soon.
I am far too bereft and heartbroken to adequately pay homage to Serge's memory, but all of us who had the joy of knowing him, working with his tools, and meeting him at various gatherings of papermakers, have lost a giant. Not only was he very tall, he was the last thoroughly trained mould maker in this tradition, making every bit of the tool by his own hand, and received Ron's blessing to continue his legacy.
Serge and his best friend transported Ron's enormous loom to weave mould facings from England to Belgium, which had been built in 1889 for Amies and was in continuous use until now. All of Ron's old tools, supplies, notes, and anything related to mould making were carefully cared for by Serge in his Brussels home and mountain studio. This latter studio was housed at his best friend's family home, in the detached workshop of his friend's late grandfather, who was a woodworker. In the midst of old woodworking equipment not powered by electricity, work benches, and a climbing wall (Serge had been an avid rock climber earlier in his life) was the loom, giant spools of wire, bags of tacks, wood pieces, and god knows what else.
Once Serge realized that mould making would become his passion, or, as
Tim Moore said, his "second act," he went full force into learning everything he could from Ron, and then reaching out to the papermaking world. He donated his moulds to a
Hand Papermaking auction, devotedly attended Dard (
NAHP) meetings before and after pandemic, and connected with all of the people and places that would need or want top-notch tools across the European-style papermaking world. In my visits with him, it seemed like after his adventures climbing, learning didgeridoo in Australia, and sailing around the world (where he eventually in South America fell alarmingly ill and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes)—after all that, he had finally found a community that loved and embraced him and his impeccable skills.
After working at Coke since the age of 19, he left his job on April 30, 2021 to make moulds full time and never looked back. He had previously made moulds on the weekends, and after negotiating a 4-day week with Coke, on the long weekends. But there was never enough time, always too many orders, and too many places and people to visit. He burned himself at all ends but somehow was full of energy all the time whenever it came to his work.
We talked a lot about how he wanted to start making su and bal, Japanese and Korean bamboo tools for papermaking, because he couldn't imagine it being that much harder than the moulds he made. He searched for European sources for adequate bamboo and traveled to London in the spring of 2023 to meet my Korean bamboo screen weaving teacher, the national treasure of that craft. He had planned for years to visit Japan to meet screen makers there but was stymied by pandemic until June 2024, when he was finally able to meet bamboo specialists despite health challenges.
I wrote to him in Sept 2022 to confess I had made very little headway on my book about toolmakers for hand papermaking, and noted I had to hurry before more people died (this was after Ron passed away). I had no idea that Serge would be next, and have been blindsided by grief. As I dig further into our correspondence, I see how we shared our own worries about not getting enough done, yet being too worn out to do everything we wanted: he had to recover from a shoulder injury and reminded me last year, "take your time and put priorities on things that matter most. I learned it the hard way."
I have not been able to upload all of my photos from my European research trip of 2019, for which he was my wonderful host. For now, you can learn a bit about him in old blog posts:
My first visit with Serge in NYC in 2017
The second part of this post is about Serge's work for Pascal Jeanjean (2019)
The first part of this post is about Serge (2019)
Scroll past my Netherlands visit to see Serge with his loom in 2019
He is survived by his parents, sister and brother-in-law and their children, brother and his children, his best friends and their children, and his aunt, uncle, and cousins. His ashes were interred on July 24 in La Hulpe. The French notice is here.
I had intended to write my chapter about Serge for over a month (as you can see from this to do list that is still sitting under my computer), and am aghast that he is not around anymore to edit my mistakes. I will still write it, so if you have anecdotes, stories, or photos to share about him, please let me know soon as my manuscript is due at the end of this year. This is a devastating loss, not only personally, but to the entire papermaking world and the wider world of those who are safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.
