History

My first name is Espenbach and my last name Herrebout. I am born in 1976 in the Netherlands. I’m a father of two wonderful children and I love to design and create art out of various kinds of metals. Art jewellery and other special artefacts is what I create. The art expresses a lot of symbolism and life, and loves to be worn and seen.

For my art-creations I most of the time use and process metals like silver, gold, copper and brass. I also combine colourful precious stones onto them. The main handcrafting technique which I apply is done with a special hammer and chisels or punches. This is called ‘chasing and repoussé’. In the process as a whole, a lot of precision and patience is needed.

Chasing and repoussé was also practised by ancient civilisations like the Egyptians and the Greek. Also around the 17th and 18th century Dutch silversmiths were very skilful in the so called chasing and repoussé techniques.

Nowadays this handcrafts technique is quite rare and especially in the way I learned to master this fine art technique. It took me a lot of effort and years to fully master this silversmith techniques and all the skills and precision needed.

As an eight year old child I learned the basics of these techniques from my parents. My beloved father Krijn, was an artist himself and he was very skilful in creating art out of stone, sculpting wood and processing various kinds of metals. My mother Manja, is very talented in drawing and painting.

While travelling a lot throughout the world, during my childhood. Myself and my family we were in close contact with our surrounding nature and culture. This contact with beautiful nature was and still is a magnificent source of inspiration for me as an artist.