Living Iron is in production. My bookbinder’s heart is excited: ten years after A Resistible Force I am going from the printing press to the binder’s workshop. The scale and speed of industrial book manufacture cannot be compared to…
Read more
Two years have passed since my last blog post. Two years filled with books and some unexpected hurdles on the way. Meanwhile LIVING IRON, about the rich diversity of iron and the visual appeal of rust, has continued to grow and is now reaching completion. …
Read more
An entry in the ‘books’ supplement of our daily newspaper shows an amazing sketch of a person drawing in bed in what must be a most uncomfortable position. The lines are simple, the scene is gripping, it could be a child or an adult, but there is also a quality which…
Read moreWe’re often being taught to expand, to research new things, to think big. But what about remaining true, at least for a while, to the small scale? The painter Giorgio Morandi found repeated inspiration (and fame) in a collection of bottles and pots. © Giorgio…
Read moreA rare sight in The Netherlands : half hidden behind a farmhouse, a crumbling hay barn. This country is generally so clean and organised that most people here would be shocked by my enthusiasm, of course, and this shed is certainly becoming dangerous to use. But my heart made a…
Read moreOne of my favourite places for photography to do with iron is a bulk terminal situated near the Dutch coast. I’ve had the chance to be there in different seasons and to watch the unexpected amount of wildlife it harbours. It is especially impressive in the month of June when…
Read moreHere is another quotation in the same spirit as in last week’s blog post from an inspiring little book, ‘What is history’ by E. H. Carr: ‘…as soon as I have got going on a few of what I take to be the capital sources, the itch becomes too strong…
Read moreThis summer I see rusty colours wherever I go. It is the theme of my daily (pre)occupation. Large steel tubes for a North Sea wind turbine Recently, a short stay on the beach… Fishing gear on a…
Read moreA moment of pause to pick up this journal after a month has, once again, passed too quickly. I’m listening to Benjamin Biolay’s music compilation ‘Rose Kennedy’ which sounds very French and summery and fits a Sunday afternoon of making order around me. Changing the scenery in my studio is…
Read moreThe contrast between my books appears sometimes to be confusing. There is a leading thread, however, as each one is the result of a largely visual coup de foudre. I didn’t plan to go to India, I was invited and once there, it struck me deep. I never thought I…
Read moreOn December 23 I mentioned in this weblog the moment when I set out to find a publisher for Rajasthan, and how ill prepared I had been for the attitudes in the trade. I believe it could be interesting to write a small book for authors in search of a publisher and it…
Read moreAlmost nine years after its launch, Rajasthan is still living its own life. It was by sheer chance that a friend found the book last week sitting comfortably in an armchair on the cover of a flyer from an interior decorator in Laren, the Netherlands. …
Read moreToday, while the Dutch are keeping their fingers crossed for the first chance of a Elfstedentocht after fifteen years and people have taken out their ice skates all over the Netherlands, I remember freezing but sunny days on the Zeeland beaches in search of images for my book A Resistible…
Read moreAt the launch of Rajasthan in London in the Fall of 2003, a journalist asks me why, being Dutch, I have not made a book about Indonesia. Although the question is meant to tease me, it is fundamental and the journalist himself is surprised by its effect. What is the…
Read more