There’s a joke my dad told me once, in defence of his habit of keeping things he had no immediate use for, but one day might. In its simple form it goes something like, “How can you tell a Dutch person by looking at their rubbish?” ...The punchline is that they have none.

It always stuck with me as a truism about my father, and his father...and just about every other Dutch person I’ve known. All of whom, despite their relative material comfort, continue the same deep-seated Calvinist tendency of thriftiness and moderated consumption. I’ve come to admire these values as a simple foundation for living sustainably and authentically, and (in a very Dutch way) against a culture of appearances.

This chair makes a case for the examined life - a life enriched by thinking about the things that matter: our values, our aims, our society. It is a recalibration of values in the context of a society that is always hungry for faster, newer, more. It is an ode to living slowly and gently, the handmade, families and communities, and the ethics of consuming less and valuing time, people and resources more carefully.
This chair was made from an old floor beam dad kept from the renovation of our first home some 30 years ago and draws references from the aesthetics of Dutch culture. The pearl earring is an obvious nod to Vermeer, and a symbolic extension of the beauty and perceived value of this utilitarian chair.