It all started with a phonecall in June: ABN AMRO was looking for designers to come up with a sustainable solution for everyday situations, and if we could pitch an idea in July?

Since our House of Thol slogan is 'Durable products for easy green living' of course we had to participate!
We had a few ideas up our sleeve that could perhaps impact a marker like Earth Overshoot Day.

We took a close look at our own day-to-day and found plenty of things that we still can do better.
​One of the things that's a real problem, is food waste: with two young kids with fluctuating appetites in the house, we can't help but throw out food ever so often.
Such a waste! Not only because of the money, but also because of the resources we waste.

And this goes beyond our household: in the Netherlands we throw out 34 kilograms of food each per year, and globally one third of the food produced is wasted.
That's about 1.3 billion tons!
​
If we could save only a quarter of that amount, we could feed every hungry mouth in the world (source). 

Bringing it back to our own small household: what can we do to avoid food waste in our daily lives?
We noticed we often have trouble with fruits and vegetables: what is the best way to store them, so they stay fresh for longest and we don't have to throw out wrinkled bell peppers?

Turns out not every fruit and vegetable plays nice with others, so keeping them all together in one large fruit bowl might not be such a great idea: the ethylene coming from fruits like apples can negatively impact the taste or ripeness of other fruits in the bowl.
Anyway, learning about the best way to store fresh food involved a whole lot of research (spreadsheets, seriously) that deserves its own blog post soon.

Back to the process: We presented our plans in Amsterdam in July and the day after our meeting with the jurors we drove off to the Schwarzwald in a 42°c heat and two eager little boys in a car without airconditioning.

We spent two blissful weeks of summer break, and got the phonecall with the final go for our Poma/Olera project while en route.

These past months, ever since returning home from our break, have been all about Poma/Olera. 

The design changed somewhat from the first drafts and we created a series of round vessels specifically designed to store fruits and vegetables in a better way.

The making process involved a lot of sketching,computer drawing, 3d printing, mold making, clay casting, finishing, failing, doing it again, changing the molds, recasting, firing the kiln, glazing tests, new glazing tests, production, production, production.
​
Well, your typical design process, really.

We're super happy and proud to be able to showcase the first prototypes of our Poma/Olera series at the Game Changers Pavilion on the Ketelhuisplein during this Dutch Design Week.
We'd love to see you there!

Last weekend we spent 4 days in sunny The Hague at chique art/design festival 'Masterly The Hague' - Not only was the festival taking place in a beautiful setting, we were blessed with great weather and many enthusiastic and lovely visitors!

We were super happy with the great presentation of our work: the bathtub being flanked by this gorgeous 1930ties silk Kimono that was on loan from the Gemeentemuseum The Hague, and the over all high quality athmosphere at Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder.
Also not too bad to share a room with skillfull glass artist Geir Nustad and be a temporary direct neighbor of Orange or Red, Bibi Smit and Thed Konings.

And, lest i forget: we worked together with Ceramist Henriette Meijer to create a stylish floral setting at the entrance of Museum Bredius.

Since we were pretty much talking all the time, we didn't get to take that many photographs. 
Luckily plenty of others did!
Here's a few of the pictures we found online. All images link back to the photographer or account we found them.

Thank you Nicole Uniquole and the Masterly The Hague organisation for a lovely festival!  

Father's Day is around the corner! 
And although it might seem all fathers need new Americana accessories for their BBQ, we know for a fact many dads love to let things grow.

That's why we busted our behinds to get the Helios out there in time: the new durable tool to help you grow your pits, bulbs and cuttings on water.
Read all about our Helios Constellation here.

Is your dad more of a houseplant fan?
Why not gift him a Waterworks-set to help keep his indoor greenery happy and healthy.

But that's not actually what this post is about: As a little something extra, we added a few new Father/Family-themed Growing Cards to our collection.

With these cards, you're not only sending your dad a sweet message, you'll also give him something to grow.

The cards have been printed on Growing paper that contains wildflower seeds.
To germinate the seeds, lay the paper in moist soil, place in a sunny spot, cover with a thin layer of earth and keep moist. 
Depending on the kind of seed in the paper, you'll see the first tiny green leaves pop out of the earth after about ten days.

Mothersday is around the corner! 
​Does your mother like flowers?
​Gift her a Flower Constellation this weekend so she can create stunning floral masterpieces every time while saving on flowers.

Because we are huge fans of mothers in general, (and ours in particular), we designed special Mother-celebrating Bee Happy Growing cards for Mothersday.

With these cards, you're not only sending your mom a sweet message, you're also giving her a delayed bouquet of flowers. ​

Want to dave time and have your present sent directly to your mothers' address?
We can do that! Simply fill out the correct address at check out.

We can even write your mothersday-card for you. Let us know what should be on the card (max 5 lines) and we'll make sure to write down your message as neatly as we can.

Last fall we wanted to do something special for the Holiday season and designed custom Flower Constellations wrapping paper based on Dutch floral still lifes.
Remember? (click)

​You helped us out by letting us know which masterpiece you liked best, and we ended up with lovely rich colored Rachel Ruijsch wrapping paper that turns your Flower Constellation in a super chique present fitting for the Holidays.

We're still in love with the beautiful still life of seventeenth century Dutch master Rachel Ruijsch.
​Yet the dark and saturated colors in the painting might be more of a winter thing

We literally spent hours in the public domain (thank you World of Driftwood) to find bright colored paintings that would make good wrapping paper.

This time we looked though the extensive archive of Dutch painters and, with spring colors and brightness in mind, narrowed it down to these two options:

This Dutch painter was one of the first to specialize in still life floral paintings and started a trend that went on for centuries.

Although his work is highly sought after, Ambrosius Boschaert the elder does not have a large portfolio. His time was mostly spent working as an art-dealer.
Even more reason to make sure his trend-setting work is not forgotten.

Van Gogh is one of the most (in)famous artists of our country, and made quite a few floral paintings. 
​
Although happily colored, the timing of this painting of irises in a vase (May 1890), is rather gloomy: Vincent would die from complications after a self-inflicted gun-shot wound two months later. 
Maybe not so happy-go-lucky, but an important piece of Dutch art history.

So, what do you think?
Should we go for the important Dutch staple Van Gogh, or choose the painting from the master who may have started it all: Ambrosius Bosschaert?

That way we'll have the new wrapping paper ready to go for Object Rotterdam

It took some organizational skill and a lot of family help to schedule ourselves kid-free and in the south of the country on Saturday and be able to take a day-trip to Paris.

​That's making it sound a lot more romantic than it was: What it came down to, was us spending 9 hours in the car for 5 hours at Parc Expositions Villepinte (+ a short joyful stop at a hypermarché).

It was all worth it.
We brought Champagne and cheese to officially celebrate the Wren and Kiwi launch and shared a festive toast with Ay Lin, Casper and the Ay Illuminate crew.

​Seeing our designs displayed in the Ay Illuminate booth and how well they fit in with the rest of the Ay Illuminate collection made it all come together, and it was wonderful to experience the response of the M&O public.

After enjoying the company at the booth for a while, we did a quick (three hour) round of the fair that was way too short to see anything yet left us both with sore feet (11.000+ steps according to my phone).

All in all this flying visit took us 14 hours, and i'm so happy we went.
​Below you'll find a few more snapshots of the booth and our trip. 

​Have you been to M&O?
​What did you like best?

We had to bite our tongues for sooo long and keep this project under wraps...
But the day has come: We can finally proudly present to you the Wren and Kiwi lightshades we designed for Dutch lighting brand Ay Illuminate.

Over the past two Years, we've been working together with the lovely people from eco- and socially conscious label Ay Illuminate to design a lightshade that would not only be sustainable and reparable, but would also be suitable for production at a social workplace in the Netherlands.

Our workshop is filled with the models and prototypes we made during the different stages of the design and product development proces.

Our brief was simple, yet challenging: design a lamp that is made of sustainable, preferably recycled materials and take into account it has to be produced in the Netherlands by people working at a sheltered work environment.
And of course it has to fit in with the Ay Illuminate collection, best known for its tropical natural feel and artisan craft production methods.

After exploring several material options we came across Luxaflex: the horizontal aluminum window slats are often discarded from office buildings and can be found in many thriftstores.

we quickly figured out that to set up a continuous production of lamps, it's impossible to rely on discarded window dressings.
​When we studied into the aluminum slats a bit more, we discovered they are in fact made of 98% recycled aluminum. A great material to put to use in a new product. ​

Unfortunately it turned out to be quite an adventure to get the aluminum slats we needed on a lengthy roll. 

By stubbornly e-mailing, calling, e-mailing again, calling again for many months by Thomas, we finally got through to the right people and received the right material to produce our prototypes with.

(Unfortunately we pretty much had to go through the same ordeal to get the material for production.)

And thus began the final puzzle: we designed frames in different shapes, with the slats running over them, through them, under them. We let the slats travel back up for a nice finish and layered look, used our Solidworks skills to pretty much draw out every silhouette we could think of. 

We tried all kinds of different metal thingies (by lack of a better word) to secure the aluminum bands without glue or fasteners and went through lengths getting the right size delivered. 

We designed the frame as a flat pack kit, clicking into eachother as a puzzle. Happy to be working together with the lovely people from Samosa Nijmegen for excellent and fast lasercutting.

We used 6 mm poplar multiplex, tried 5 mm and went back to 6 mm Ecoplex when the final 5 mm testpiece came out wobbly.

So many little things were adjusted and tweaked before the Wren and Kiwi were finally deemed fit for production.

Thomas spent quite a few days at the Tomin Group deliberating and explaning the way the lamps should be finished and assembled.

These next few days the Wren and Kiwi lamps will be on display during Maison & Objet in Paris. 
For this special occasion they will be joined by their larger sibling, the Wren XL.
We installed the XL in our living room a few weeks ago to test te effect, and its impressive size dwarfed quite a few of our pieces of furniture.

After all our hard work, we're excited about the launch of the lamps in Paris and will be at the fair to see them with our own eyes this Saturday.

Come say hi if you're at Maison et Objet this weekend, we'd love to see you!
Ay Illuminate can be found in Hall 5A, R54/S53

Want to know more about the wren en Kiwi lamps?
Practical information and a link to Ay Illuminate can be found in the product description: