December 11, 2018
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 the… Read more
November 19, 2013
What do we see in certain things? One of my favourite objects in my studio is just a piece of crushed wrapping paper. It came to me as the padding around a book sent by mail in a box,… Read more
October 8, 2013
Constructions of the mind Could it be that ‘it’ was in the air? That we walk around with themes that unconsciously develop in our head until they are ‘ripe’ to be triggered? This morning my eye was caught… Read more
July 30, 2013
Building blocks No time to write long blog posts: I am in the process of giving birth to a book! But my eye continues to travel and this is what I have collected rcently. The brick walls of a… Read more
June 26, 2013
On a journey While I’m plunged in the preparations of Living Iron these days, my blog has seemingly come to a standstill so this is more an update for friends who may find me a little unfaithful. When this book project began I… Read more
April 30, 2013
Ferns Karl Blossfeldt, Adiantum Pedatum (maidenhair fern) My walk today was meant to be a break from nineteenth century steel. It led me unexpectedly to early twentieth century wrought iron. After a long winter the ferns are unfurling from a sea… Read more
April 6, 2013
Brickwork… and the use of iron in architecture These days I’m reading about the use of iron in early architecture, especially since a group of researchers has found a way to reveal the DNA of ancient pieces of… Read more
March 16, 2013
Ancient metallurgy I’m plunged in the early days of iron production about which lots of research have been done over the past twenty years. Iron is generally not the most admired of metals and when I called a Dutch… Read more
March 1, 2013
Firefall The colour red, in stark contrast with last week’s grey-and-whites, has unexpectedly led me this week to an inspiring series of lectures by scientist Richard Feynman. It began with pictures of what looked like a flow of lava but… Read more
January 18, 2013
The quality of a line What is the difference between a line – and certainly characters – drawn by hand and in print? How come that in the first case there is an unmistakable warmth which is hard to… Read more