Iconic Dutch Design is recontexualized by a younger generation in the jubilee exhibition of contemporary design publisher Thomas Eyck. In collaboration with Zuiderzee Museum and curator Jules van den Langenberg this section is first to publish a series of new projects.
 
To mark his jubilee ten product series were selected from Thomas Eyck’s collection, which are exemplary for the collaborations the publisher & distributor has developed with designers and producers since 2007. Accordingly, ten young designers, artists and architects were invited to create a project in which the iconic t.e. objects are studied and recontextualised. The retrospective exhibition reviews the past decade and forecasts a potential future for the t.e. collection. Installation 3/10 by Bruno Vermeersch is a reflection on the ‘Withering Tableware’ series, developed for Thomas Eyck in 2014 by Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters in collaboration with Royal Tichelaar Makkum.
 
Impression of a house
Bruno Vermeersch uses a collection of 60 porcelain plates, cups, dishes, vases and bowls and protects them by building a transparent house in which the vague impression of a window is still visible. When you look closely at the crockery, you can make out an increasingly vague decoration painted with delicate flowers and branches. In his drive to preserve these fragile, ‘wilting’ objects, architect Bruno Vermeersch created a form study of a feather-light house. He began by making a wooden mould featuring the spatial impression of a house.

Bruno Vermeersch reflects on a serie of Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters. In the items, use of materials, innovating ways of making things, and exhibitions by Studio Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters, the designers take inspiration from things including the transience of nature. Thomas Eyck commissioned them to create eight pieces of tableware, ‘Withering Tableware’, in 2014. Porcelain is traditionally painted by hand. Kolk and Kusters turned this process around by painting the mould rather than the crockery itself. The mould is then cast several times, causing the image of the flower to slowly fade.
 
In total the series of tableware items consists of 60 different pieces, fired by Royal Tichelaar Makkum. The company was founded in 1572 and is constantly innovating, without compromising the age-old artisanal working methods.
 
The exhibition 10 Years of Thomas Eyck is open until 14 May 2017 at Zuiderzee Museum Enkhuizen