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.

In the Clouds / Planes - Crowdyhouse premiere starting soon!

In the Clouds / Planes
photograph by House of Thol

It's been a couple of months since we first launched our original 'In the Clouds'-series during ShowUP. (Back then, i wrote this blog about the heritage of the clouds and birds as a porcelain print.)
In August, the initial pieces were received with great enthusiasm, and even more so in October, when we presented the first extension of the series: the In the Clouds bowls, during the Dutch Design Week.

In the Clouds / Planes - porcelain cups
photograph by House of Thol

And then... well, we didn't put any effort in getting the porcelain pieces out there.
Truth is: we had made the range of variations within the series too large for us to produce in the quantities needed.
This made us hesitant to approach stores and resellers in fear of orders that would be wildly inefficient to make.

production original In the Clouds-series
photograph by House of Thol

Well... we made a few minor adjustments in the design and are now launching a new In the Clouds series.
And this time we're keeping ourselves in check: Instead of offering 24 variations to start with, we're relaunching the In the Clouds cups in one size: medium, two versions: birds and planes, and three possible colours: white, greyish white and light-blue. All cups have a glazed finish.
Still plenty to choose from!

In the Clouds cups in light-blue and greyish white
photograph by House of Thol

To give ourselves the much-needed time to produce a little supply, we're launching the new In the Clouds / Planes cups as a Crowdyhouse premiere: From April 4th onwards, the In the Clouds/Planes cups will be available exclusively via Crowdyhouse for three weeks.
After this launch-period, the cups will be more widely available and we'll keep you posted about new points of sale.

In the Clouds cups
photograph by House of Thol

To be the first to own the new In the Clouds / Planes, check out our campaign on Crowdyhouse.

Interested in reselling these cups? Get in touch!

Baking corks and firing kilns against the clock / DDW prep

Only a little time left before the Dutch Design Week officially kicks off in Eindhoven. And although we thought we were on schedule, this final week before the show always seems to have about three days too few.

We'll probably make it.
In the end.

Anyway...
Right now we're fighting the clock newsletter writing, cork making, cone casting, waterworks packaging, cold battling, porcelain producing, exhibition building and (especially) kiln firing.

Come check out the results of all our hard work at the Design Perron in Eindhoven next week.
We'll be there every day and would love to see you.

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All square images are from our Instagram account.

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!

House of Thol | Scape Mirror

Although getting Waterworks out there in stores in Netherlands (and beyond) is one of our main focal points at the moment, we're working hard on new products behind the scenes.
Our collaboration with Pols Potten for example (click), and a lovely project that's all about porcelain (we'll post some of the material experiments soon).
 -Getting curious? Follow us on Instagram for the latest studio-sneak-peaks.

For all of you who've  been following us on Instagram and other social media: you might have seen sneak peaks of this new product pass by in the last weeks:

Sneak peak of the work-in-progress

Let me start at the beginning, we featured the photographs by Italian landscape photographer Franco Fontana on our other blog a while ago, and suddenly an old design-idea resurfaced and clicked right into place: a layered mirror for the hallway.

We decided to not waste any more time and went for it: It took us little time to finish the initial design of our hallway mirror and start building the prototype.

Work-in-progress: American White Oak frame.

Fast forward...
Here's the finished piece:

Scape Mirror, House of Thol 2015 | American White Oak, Mirrors
photograph by House of Thol

Our goal was to create a simple yet playful mirror, slightly inspired by Franco Fontana's architectural photographs.
A mirror for the hallway that wouldn't take up too much space, but would still have room for the occasional letter and set of keys.

Scape Mirror, House of Thol 2015 | American White Oak, Mirrors
photograph by House of Thol

Scape Mirror, House of Thol 2015 | American White Oak, Mirrors
photograph by House of Thol

As you can see, the three separate mirrors are stacked on top of each other, creating a subtle layered reflection and adding to the city-scape-like appearance.
And we're naming it: the Scape Mirror.

This first Scape mirror is still a prototype, but we're already looking into (small-scale) production possibilities.
Can't wait for that? Pop us an e-mail!

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.

Crates full of glass

It took a while (remember?) and it involved a lot of e-mailing back and forth as well as sending the occasional model to the other side of the world, but the moment is almost there:  the first batch of glass reservoirs will be shipped to the Netherlands soon.

photograph by Ravikumar

If all goes according to (often adapted) plan, the glasswork should be on its way to the airport by Friday, which means it's at our studio next week Thursday (-ish).

We're trying to get some work done while keeping our fingers crossed, hoping all will be well.
Will keep you posted!

-edit Monday July 7th: sadly the glass had not been shipped yet, but it should be picked up at the factory Tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

The story of the cone | part II

finished cones

Remember we had to set up our own terracotta production line (click)?

Well, it's up and running now!
It takes a lot of work and involves a lot of going back to the studio at night to prepare batches for firing, but so far all is going pretty well and we're close to the number we need to cover the first orders.

That said, we're still looking for a production facility for future batches, and we're hoping to have more news about that within the next couple of months.
Meanwhile, a couple of snapshots of the cones in the kiln, before and after firing, and (above) the first boxes full of finished cones.

The story of the cone

This is a photograph of ten molds for the ceramic cone drying in the backyard of our studio.
And that is not at all what we planned.

We planned to have the cones made in China, where they're great with ceramics and can easily produce large amounts of ... well... anything.
After sending a package containing several ceramic cones + a mothershape to cast a mold around to the manufacturer we had been in touch with, we were confident nothing could go wrong.

Photographs of the first batch of samples we received
read about it here

The first batch we received was not quite there yet, but promising nevertheless (remember), so Thomas made a lovely sheet to communicate the adjustments we were looking for (thinner walls, different glaze-heigths, darker and redder terracotta a.o.), which we e-mailed to the manufacturer that same week.

We didn't hear anything for a little while, but weren't alarmed, thinking that -after the adjustments were made- we were pretty much ready to order a first batch.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, we received this photograph:

photograph we got from the manufacturer

Slightly baffled, we immediately replied with a new sheet with adjustments, stressing the parts that were most important to us.  
And that's the last we heard of this manufacturer.

Having no time to start this process again with a new manufacturer before the first Waterworks batch is due, we decided to take matters into our own hands and set up an in-house production-line.

So that's where we stand: we're waiting for the molds to dry so we can start casting the first cones soon.
There is one plus to this whole situation: The money saved on shipment is now used instead to buy a kiln that can hopefully be put to good use for many future House of Thol projects.

Kit's first run

We're beyond excited about the latest addition to our studio inventory: our brand new Ultimaker 2 3d-printer, a.k.a. Kit!
Here he is on one of his first runs, printing out the House of Thol logo:


Kit's first run from House of Thol

Two very very happy people were watching that logo grow!

Since i know we're a generation of people who have problems with attention span, i sped up the video a bit (4x) so you can all witness the magic of Kit's efforts without getting bored.
And watch it again.
And again.
And again...

This will not be the last you're seeing from Kit!

The first terracotta samples...

Not so long ago we received the first glass samples, which were nice, just not completely perfect yet (remember this blogpost?).

When the package of terra-cotta samples arrived, again we were over the moon about it (no learning curve) and i couldn't wait for Thomas to get here so we could open the little box together.

A quick glance and i thought these samples were perfect.
Of course they weren't... Sadly enough Thomas pointed out there were quite a few flaws to be discovered.

No worries though: it seems like the mould the factory made is fine, so the flaws should be easy to fix, and new samples are already being made. -We'll keep you posted!

The first glass samples...

Sooo, we received the first glass samples last week.
Obviously we were eagerly awaiting their arrival, and when the package came in, i actually shot so many photographs of Thomas opening it, that i could make a stop-motion film.
Which i did, just to illustrate how excited we were:



However... Obviously the samples weren't perfect yet.
I guess we were both so exhilirated about the package in the mail, we kind of forgot these are only the first samples and were bound to have a few things wrong with them.
Truth be told, we did feel kind of deflated when the glass reservoirs turned out to be similar to the prototypes we made, but not yet exactly the same. And not completely perfect yet.

Oh well...
Since then Thomas made a detailed list of the things that need to be changed and the manufacturer is making new samples as we speak. This time he uses a mold to help with the shape, and since we've also been a bit more specific about what we're looking for, we have high hopes for this batch.

Again: we'll keep you posted!