proud and a bit self-conscious | Fonds Kwadraat presents House of Thol

from our Instagram

A while ago the lovely guys from Koekepeer visited our studio and made this killer video portrait for Fonds Kwadraat:

Video by Koekepeer | commissioned by Fonds Kwadraat

We're happy and proud but also kind of self conscious about it (which will probably wear off over time).
Thank you Fonds Kwadraat and Studio Koekepeer!

This video is part of a series of portraits from artists who received an interest-free Fonds Kwadraat loan, the series is aptly named 'Fonds Kwadraat Exposeert". Click here for more video's from the series (even more will be added over the next weeks)

Interested of seeing more from Koekepeer? Visit the Koekepeer website, or check out their page on Facebook.

ps. - we'll look into the possibility of adding subtitles to the film later.

House of Thol for Pols Potten - coming soon!

We've been sitting on this one for a while...

Last August we participated in an open call of the creative industries fund (Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie) to come up with a proposal for one of five companies.

Even if we wouldn't come up with a proposal, we decided it was worth to respond to the call as the option was given to visit the participating companies.
Al visits would take place in one week and we only had one day that week on which both of us could make it. A lucky coincidence meant that this was exactly the day Pols Potten would be visited, and we happily joined the field-trip to their headquarters in Aalsmeer.

 a few snapshots taken during the company-visit in August

In the Pols Potten headquarters we got the chance to walk around, check out their new collection and all-time bestsellers, and as an added bonus we got a crash-course in Pols Potten economics and sales.

We left inspired and spent the next two weeks trying to come up with a proposal that would be perfect for Pols Potten and would stand out in the -undoubtedly- dozens of applications that would be sent in.
We sent our proposal in just in time for dead-line and then.... nothing.

The proposals were supposed to be reviewed within a few weeks, so we waited eagerly and... still nothing.

Until, after a month-and-a-half we missed a phonecall from the fund.
Thomas returned the call, not expecting a whole lot of it.
Well... -you probably already guessed this- as it turned out Pols Potten chose our proposal to work with!
Out of a 144 applications, we are the lucky design studio to develop a new product for Pols Potten with the help of the Creative Industries Fund.

In December we went back to Aalsmeer for a first official Pols Potten x House of Thol design meeting, and since then we've been quietly working on the design. We're not really in the position to reveal much about the product, except what the Creative Industries Fund published:

"House of Thol will design a series of pendant lamps consisting of two separate parts. Within the series, those parts are interchangeable, making it possible for the consumer to compose their own lamp."

Oh... and this little studio sneak-peak of a bunch of early paper models:

For the official announcement (in Dutch) and the other 4 companies + winning designers, click here.

We'll keep you posted!