Elaine Yan Ling Ng on eggshells.

Elaine Yan Ling Ng (elaineyanlingng.com) is a Hong Kong-based designer and innovator. She founded her own studio, The Fabrick Lab, in 2013, after stints working with the likes of Nissan and Nokia.

Initially trained as a textile designer and weaver at London’s Central Saint Martins, her work encompasses traditional craft and cutting edge technology, with clients and collaborations ranging from Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat (kvadrat.dk/en) to crystal company Swarovski (swarovski.com/en_GB-GB), via UBS, and a group of traditional artisans in the Guizhou area of southern China.

Most recently, she has been working with design brand, Nature Squared (naturesquared.com), on CArrele (pictured), a range of tiles made from waste, or to be more precise, eggshells.

Elaine is a TED Fellow and has a fistful of design awards, including The Emerging Talent Award from Design Anthology (design-anthology.com), GGEF’s Eco Innovator Award, Swarovski’s Designer of the Future Award and Tatler’s Gen T Award.

In this episode we chat about: making tiles from eggshells (not surprisingly); learning to sew at the age of three; her ten pin bowling champion father; learning to love weaving; how maths and data feed into her work; designing student pieces with shape memory alloy; taking jobs at Nissan and Nokia; the changing design culture in China; setting up her own studio; how winning an award from Swarovski transformed her career; and bridging the gap between craft and industry.
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