A designers' dilemma: The story of Stuff

This short film was made in 2007, and is still very relevant today. Even more relevant, i would say, with our collective cellphone addicition (the Iphone came out somewhere around the time this movie was made)(feels ancient, right?).

What to do as a designer?
Should we stop creating stuff altogether or is it our responsibility to keep designing, but do it smarter and make a difference?
Is that even possible?
Can we make a difference by adding more stuff?

More about this and more video's can be found on thestoryofstuff.org.
Feel free to share your thoughts.

Lately, in the studio...

ShowUP is around the corner and we're working our asses off to have our newest project ready to launch. 

Follow us on Instagram for realtime studio sneak peaks.

Stacked Concrete Sideboard // A place to store things

The main reason we designed this custom sideboard was that we needed a place to store things (as in stuff) and we just couldn't find a cabinet that would have room for everything we wanted to keep + showcase our books without it taking up too much space.

It's a made-to-measure translation of Thomas' kitchen designs, with a few added design bonusses: the cabinet-doors open and close with hinges that are a part of their lasercut shape for example, and instead of folded aluminum handles, we went with handles made of American white oak.

Notice the apparent imprints the legs of the bookcase make in the concrete top?

The top was made in collaboration with 8R beton, who have an extensive knowledge of all things concrete, and made it of lightweight fiber-enforced concrete (don't be mistaken, it still weighs approximately 75 kg.).

What is your solution for all the things you have lying around?
Did you find that perfectly fitted cabinet yet?

For something completely different: Panamarenko

By House of Thol on Instagram

Don't have any plans this weekend?
Get yourself to Antwerp to see the Panamarenko Universum exhibition at the M HKA: it's your last chance!

By House of Thol on Instagram

We were there semi-coincidentally this Sunday, and it's definitely worth a trip to the Belgian Diamant city.

For more information, check out the M HKA website.
By the way, here's a little (Dutch/Belgian) video about the exhibition by Arttube (and check out this short video about two nine-year-old boys visiting the exibition):

Pretty rocks @ Naturalis

Two of the more solid natural beauties we encountered during our visit of Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden last weekend:

Sulphur | Naturalis Biodiversity Centre Leiden | Photograph by House of Thol

Iron | Naturalis Biodiversity Centre Leiden | Photograph by House of Thol

Monday Morning Spaghetti / Oops

From the House of Thol Instagram

Working on samples for our collaboration with Pols Potten.
Let's start fresh with this one...

The other blog: World of Driftwood

Did you know we have another blog?

In our House of Thol blog we try to stick to the topic: House of Thol, our projects and everything surrounding that.

But, we also have a place for all the miscellaneous beautiful things we come across: design, photography, art, interiors, architecture, DIY's, pretty icepops...

All that inspirational prettiness is collected in our other blog, our online scrapbook: World Of Driftwood.
Make sure to check it out if you like pretty things (like we do).

Here are a few of the things we collected last month:
(a click on the photograph should bring you directly to the blogpost)

Shooting jewelry - what we did this Weekend

Last Saturday was the first (kind of) sunny day in over a week: finally time for some photography!

Neotribal, a range of very wearable unique handmade necklaces with a geomatric touch (enameled brass, gilded ball-chain), has been waiting to be added to the webshop for a while now, and this Weekend we finally had time to shoot some pieces.

Neotribal - enameled brass, gilded ball-chain - The Driftwood '13/'14

We'll be adding them to the shop shortly, don't miss it, these are all unique works of jewelry!

In case you're wondering why we didn't go outside when the weather was that nice: don't worry, we did that too.

Pinterest Love | Follow us!

We've been loving Pinterest so much lately... - From party-scenes to stylish interiors and from childrens' toys to art and photography, there is no stopping us when it comes to pinning.

Curious? Follow us here.

Let's get this New Year started.

A chronology of corks

During the final product-development stages of Waterworks we encountered some troubles with the cork stoppers we use.
We started out thinking that every cork would be both water- and air-tight.
That's what corks are made for, right?
Wrong.

Sadly, we found out the hard way that the 2000 agglomorated corks our supplier delivered with the first batch of Waterworks-sets back in the early days of summer, were actually not air-tight.
Minor detail you'd think?
Well, the fact that the corks weren't closing the reservoir air-tight, meant that no vacuum would be created in the glass bulb, and all sets would drain too fast.
This set-back cost us a major head-ache and then some...

Oh well.... no use to dwell on it.

Luckily we found a supplier in Portugal who could send us a new batch of natural corks within a week.
Just as well, since we never asked for agglomorated corks to start with, and preferred the look of natural cork anyway.

The only problem with these corks is that they're a natural product, which means no two corks are alike and some have bigger holes or cracks that make it difficult to close the reservoir air-tight.
Fine, we just had to personally test every cork stopper before adding it to a Waterworks-set.
Which we did.
And it cost us a lot of time.
And sadly some inconsistensies were hard to detect, which meant some Waterworks-sets were still draining too fast for no apparent reason.

After receiving a few questions about the speed in which the reservoir should drain, we decided we should come up with a better solution for the stopper and started exploring different possibilities.

First thing we did was order the silicon stoppers that are used in the scientific world.
Obviously they were up for the job: closing the holes with an ice-cold air-tight precision. However, the look and feel of the corks was exactly like that: ice-cold and scientific.
Not at all fresh and green.

We decided to try and produce silicone corks ourselves, and attempt to recreate the natural feeling we love so much.

We made a mold and test-'corks', adding grit and cork-gratings to the mix. All in our endeavour to create natural-looking but 100% air-tight corks.
We ended up with a lovely material made of the grated corks that looked pretty similar to the agglomorated corks we started with, while retaining a complete air-tightness.

But.... although the mixture we cooked up was so alike the agglomorated corks, our preference was to find something that would better resemble our natural corks.

We thought of another possible solution: what if we could 'dress' the corks we have with a little air-tight shell, only around the bottom part, keeping most of the natural look-and-feel in-tact?

We dipped corks in liquid rubber and used the necks of (happily colored) balloons to test our theory, which turned out to be spot-on.
We thought shrink-fit tubing would be perfect for the job. It took us a while to find the right type, size and color, but eventually we succeeded.
After some testing we even found a comparatively quick and easy way to add the layer to our corks.

From now on, expect your Waterworks-corks to be dressed!
Make sure to contact us if you think the cork you have might not be completely air-tight, we'll happily send you a new and improved cork stopper.

Holiday cheer: free gift wrapping on all orders

New feature in the House of Thol webshop: select your giftwrapping.
For this Holiday period we offer a lovely gift wrapping with a bit of added sparkle.

So if you're giving the gift of green fingers this Christmas, order in our webshop now to have us personally wrap your present!

Would you like to know how to DIY this wrapping paper click here. For an extremely easy 1-2-3 tutorial for the sparkly gift tags, read this blogpost.

Material love: Ceramic textures

Textured - By Lone Skov Madsen

 Layered - Utilitarian collection by Ben Fiess

Naturally crude - by Kazuhiro Katase

Pretty - By Lenneke Wispelwey

Tense - by Juz Kitson

Woolly - Soft Forms by Mariko Wada

Spotted on World of Driftwood blog