Amsterdam Made: Makers united

Amsterdam Made is a community platform for makers in and around Amsterdam.
Lucky for us, the 'around'-range extends to Zandvoort (it's pretty much Amsterdam Beach here anyway), which means we got to be part of the community and have House of Thol featured on the website.

The initiators of the platform were inspired by 'SFmade' a thriving platform established back in 2010 to boost the local manufacturing sector. Amsterdam Made has pretty much the same goal: a more diverse and sustainable local economy, where companies who design and manufacture products locally thrive.

Furthermore, Amsterdam Made is licensed by the city of Amsterdam to award an official 'Amsterdam Made' quality label to high quality products that are locally made, sustainable and innovative. 

Most importantly: Amsterdam Made connects makers in and around the city and strengthens the bond between entrepreneurs.  

Check out the growing network of entrepreneurs, craftsmen, manufacturers, artists, brewers and designers on Amsterdammade.org. 

IMM / Passagen - all set up!

Passagen / IMM 2016 has started and we're all set up at Salon Zwei in Ehrenfeld, Cologne.

If you're visiting the IMM, don't forget about Ehrenfelds' design parcours, and -more specifically- make sure to visit Salon Zwei at the Gutenbergstrasse.

Here's a close up of the little map from the Passagen booklet, showing where you should be (#76):

Don't just look through the window, but walk in for a closer look of our latest projects: The first chapter of our stoneware glazing experiment Off the ground and the Confetti & Fireworks necklaces.
Also, many of the products are for sale. Some of them only during this week.

We're having a little soiree with music and drinks this Thursday.
Will we see you there?

House of Thol @ Salon Zwei - IMM/Passagen 2016

18-24 January 2015 | SALON ZWEI

The first furniture fair of each year is the one in Köln, the IMM: By the end of January the whole German city is about fresh design and innovative ideas.
The actual fair takes place in the 'Messe', but there are plenty design-related events going on throughout the entire city.

And this year we'll be there too: House of Thol will present a fresh and green exhibition with new and renewed designs at Salon Zwei in Ehrenfeld.
We're planning on being there from Thursday on, will we see you?

SALON ZWEI
Gutenbergstr. 2 // 50823 Köln-Ehrenfeld

18-24 January 2016
Mon - Fri 12:00-20:00 // Sat & Sun 12:00-18:00
Music and drinks: Thursday from 18:00

A few DDW snapshots

4 Days down, 5 to go...
We're halfway trough the Dutch Design Week and we're having a blast at Designperron.

The stream of visitors is steady and we've made a lot of new contacts and had many lovely conversations.
Aside from enjoying the interesting talks we have with visitors walking by our stand, we're having a great time with the other exhibitors at the location.

Have you been to Eindhoven yet?
Come visit us at Designperron and have a look at the beautiful projects of Studio Hamerhaai, Roos Soetekouw, Bas Vellekoop, Kikke&Hebbe, Studio Ineke van der Werff and many others!

House of Thol @ DDW 2015

It's that time again: leaves have started falling and pepernoten are in the stores, which means the Dutch Design Week must be coming up.
The city of Eindhoven will be all about design from October 17th till 25th, and we'll be part of the program.
This DDW we'll be showcasing our fresh range of porcelain tableware 'In the Clouds' as well as the new Scape Mirror, Neotribal jewelry and the Waterworks project.

For the second consecutive year we'll be at Designperron, not far from Eindhoven's city centre, near the train tracks.
And we're not alone: For a full list of all designers and companies participating in the exhibitions around Designperron, visit the Designperron website.
A little scoop: This year Designperron will have a pop-up shop on site that offers exclusive design products from the participating brands.

Come visit us at Designperron, only a short 5-minute walk away from Eindhoven Central Station.
We're planning to be at the location during all regular opening hours of the exhibition and would love to see you there.

House of Thol @ Designperron
Fuutlaan 12
5613 AB Eindhoven

17-25 October 2015
Open daily 10:00 - 18:00

Official DDW location for Dutch Design Rides. | Free parking space available.

We'll keep you posted on this blog.

We'll be at ShowUP!

With a little over a month to go, we're getting serious about our ShowUP preparations.
It's the first time we're participating in an official trade-fair, and there are all kinds of things we need to think about besides the obvious making sure our stand will look the part.

More will surely follow.... but for now: We'll be on stand #172 and hope to see you there!

A few snapshots of Designkwartier

We visited Designkwartier in Den Haag yesterday. Here are a few snapshots of the Plant Power pop-up shop (via Instagram).

Since the weather wasn't all that we ended up spending a lot of time taking shelter in a restaurant and didn't see nearly all the things we wanted to see.
On the up-side: the Pasta Kantine (where pretty much everyone ended up, judging by the full house) was a great place to have lunch. They're in Rotterdam too, check out their website.

Don't miss Designkwartier Den Haag

image courtesy of Designkwartier.com

After its successful first edition last year, Designkwartier Den Haag is back in 2015.
From 29-31 May the 'Zeeheldenkwartier' neighbourhood will be all about design: new designs popping up on unexpected places, concept stores and exhibitions set up for just that one Weekend and designers welcoming you into their (sometimes temporary) workshops telling the stories behind their work.

Edwin Pelser, owner of design store Edwin Pelser on the Piet Heinstraat, is one of the founding fathers of the event.  And since Edwin Pelser is actually a Waterworks point of sale, we're kind of part of the Designkwartier right at its core.

However there's more: During the event the Neotribal necklaces will be for sale in the Plant Power pop-up shop (Prins Hendrikstraat 98-104), that will also showcase two of our prototypes: The Scape-mirror and KHM-27 cabinet (both in production later this year).

Don't miss Den Haags' biggest Design event of the year!

See you @ the Design for Manufacturing summit #10 this Thursday

See that face on the top left of this group of speakers? Looking familiar, no?

Thomas will be one of the panel-members on the 'From Making to Manufacturing' panel during the 'Design for Manufacturing Summit' this Thursday.
The summit is about a decentralized and leaner production-industry and runs from 15:00 - 22:00 in Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam.

The 'From Making to Manufacturing' panel will be from 18:20 till 19:10.
Other panel members are Siba Sahabi, Bo Reudler and Mark Studholme (Crowdyhouse).

Check out the DFMsummit.com website for more information and registration details.
Note: We can help you get in with a 50% discount. Just pop us an e-mail before Thursday and we'll make it work.

See you there!

The Fairs & The Greenery | 2 Urban Jungle reviews

The past few weeks were all about The Fairs: First, there was IMM Cologne (18-24 January), in the Koeln Messe, directly followed/overlapped by Maison & Objet in Paris (23-27 January), and followed in the Netherlands the small indy tradefair Show Up (1-2 February).
Then there's the Stockholm Furniture Fair (3-7 February) and the Ambiente Fair in Frankfurt will follow soon (13-17 february).

Wow! What a programme! Imagine being a buyer for a design shop...

Anyway: we've thought long and hard about participating in one of the fairs this season, but decided we'd wait until we have a bigger collection of consumer goods to present. It's quite an investment, and we'd rather do it right the first time round (or kinda right..).

Although it would have been great study-material to visit the fairs, we just didn't have the time to go. - Luckily a lot of other people did, and they spotted loads of greenery in and around the boots.

Photograph by Igor Josifovic / Happy Interior Blog

Igor, for example, from Happy Interior Blog, wrote this lovely post with his green highlights from the fair in Cologne.

Be sure to check out the full post by Igor with lots more greenery and design.

His partner-in-crime on Urban Jungle Bloggers, Joelix (Dutch born / France living Judith de Graaff) visited Paris fair Maison & Objet and wrote this lovely piece.

the Phytophiler by Studio Dossofiorito @ Maison&Objet 2015
Photograph by Judith de Graaff / Joelix.com

I totally share her love for this Phytophiler by Studio Dossofiorito. - read her full blogpost here.

We'll be sourcing the web for more. Will keep you posted!

DDW'14 - Thank you for visiting!

photograph by House of Thol

Thank you all for visiting us at Design Perron!
Those 9 days in Eindhoven went by in less than no time...

We met a lot of interesting people and had many a lovely conversation.
Oh, and we also did some business: not only did we sell all the Waterworks-sets we brought, we also spoke with a lot of retail merchants: keep an eye on this blog for new House of Thol points of sale.

See you next time!

photograph by Peter Flohr

photographs by Design Perron

DDW: the set-up

We're almost ready to start the show!

Thanks to De Klerk we have a lovely collection of greenery to show off our Waterworks-sets. Harm, who helped us decide which plants to use, very kindly wrote down all the names of the plants, but i left the note at the exhibition so right now i can only tell you we have a Metallica-plant and a fern that had something to do with monkeys.
De Klerk also lent us a really cool cactus which we've added as a decor piece, even though it doesn't leave room for a Waterworks set.

However... The backwall is eerily empty, don't you think?
Not to worry, we have something up our sleeves: remember this blogpost about why we should all have more houseplants? <6 Reasons to get houseplants now>

Well, we made a poster from the 6 reasons, check it out:

We'll hang the poster tomorrow, and more pictures from the Dutch Design Week will follow soon.

See you there!

We want more green

This Dutch Design Week we'll be campaigning again: We want more Green!

You probably know this (since i've been spamming about it):

Houseplants are not only wonderful to look at (and very en-vogue at the moment), the greenery also works wonders for indoor atmosphere and air-quality. (there'll be a full post about this soon)

So during this Dutch Design Week we'll be campaiging for greener living rooms! We want more Green!

Joining us in this campaign is Eindhovens' largest centre for indoor plants: De Klerk. Check out their website here.

Come meet us at the Design Perron and hear all about why you should have more houseplants in your living room.

House of Thol @ DDW'14 | 18-26 october

Design Perron | Fuutlaan 12

Open all days 10:00 - 18:00

Wednesday 10:00 - 21:00

See you in Eindhoven!

Last years' Dutch Design Week was the -very successful- kick-off or our crowdfundcampaign to produce Waterworks.
Not only did we win the Dutch Design Starter Audience Award, we also managed to make more than 65% of our goal that first two weeks (click).

So this year we'll be back to show Eindhoven the result of last years project and to start a new campaign, a campaign for more houseplants:
WE WANT MORE GREEN!

More to follow soon!

We'll be at 'Designperron', Fuutlaan 12 (close to Dutch Invertuals).
For more general information about the expo click here.

Small part of the official DDW map
For full map click here.

Bags of Popcorn and Popping Prosecco: the Waterworks Launchparty

Waterworks is officially launched!! Yes!!

Here's a little impression of our party last Saturday.
None of the photographs are by us, since we were simply too busy and forgot all about taking pictures. Luckily everyone has a cameraphone nowadays...

photographs by Sander Willems

A lot of people came to the party to toast with us on the successful Waterworks-launch and for a moment we were even afraid the studio wouldn't be big enough. 

Photographs by Peter Flohr

We had a lot of people to thank, so we gave a little speech...

Photograph by Sander Willems

Photographs by Peter Flohr

And of course people were very happy to take home their Waterworks-sets.

Photograph Peter Flohr

All the while the kids were having fun with balloons and the chalkboard (for a while, then they went running down the street and made Thomas chase them).

Photographs by Peter Flohr

One of those parties... 

Guys, we had a blast. Thank you all for coming!

Since Waterworks is officially launched, the Webshop is Now Open! > click here