Maarten:For us there is some sort of beauty, but there's also big contrast within that area, because it's also... [a] little bit is dark side because you know with the tidal behaviour and with the high tide, dead plants, dead animals, all the death of the sea also washed along the sea or the coastal area. It's just the contradiction as well, of the beautiness and maybe the role of the dark side of that area.
Guus:Hi, I'm Guus Kusters and together with Maarten Kolk we have a studio here in Klokgebouw. We always work as a duo but mainly together, and occasionally together with a team of freelancers, which are in and out.
Maarten:Mainly we are focusing on, well, you can call it product design, but it’s maybe more artistic in a way.
Maarten:Waddenzee is a specific area in [the] north of Holland. It's like this UNESCO heritage [site] and it's a sea between the main and then the islands of Holland. And the beautiful thing [is] that you have this tidal behaviour and we want to catch this character of the Waddenzee in multiple items, in a way, [to] create a collection around that area.
Guus:The fact that it's never the same. That like that, the process of high tide and low tide is the same, but the outcome is always different. And what we really liked, especially about the place, is that every time when there's a low tide you have this this muddy surface, but it looks like a fresh landscape. You see, if you look at it more closely, you see imprints of the birds, for example, that they eat there but you can see on which low tide they were there. The sea slowly cleans out the surface again, so you can see, “Ah, this is a fresh one, this is from the previous low tide, this one is from one before.” And there is something magical, I would say, about that, that is constantly fresh and renewing itself.
Maarten:It’s quite similar to casting porcelain because you just cast water and clay into this sort of surface, so that's when we started to imitate this rhythm of low tide, high tide; casting in, casting out. So that's how we approached the project.
Maarten:Withering Tableware is sort of spin-off from the Waddenzee project. We did some tests and we found out that when you do this—this brush stroke—and you started cast[ing], you see actually the detail of the hairs, of the direction of the brush stroke. Then we realized, “Hey, maybe we can be way more specific and way more detailed in the decoration that we paint inside the mold.” After six months we came out of this research center with how many recipes?
Guus:Fifteen?
Maarten:Fifteen. Yeah, that was it.
Guus: I think what we try to do really here, is to tell our story in terms of that... we wanted to make the flowers wither, but within the context of an existing production process, so within the context of an eight-hour work day. So if you would paint a flower that within the production process—like the first cast would be fresh and the second would already start to wither a little bit, and then would turn, maybe crumble a little bit, or turn brown. Or they would come to life within the production process, that you cannot control the end result. And with this specifically, it can be if it's a very rainy week, the outcome is completely different than when it's super dry. Or in the winter or that, or yeah, so you cannot really control [it]. I think we try to design the conditions and let the material do the work.
Maarten:When you would ask someone you know what flower you—people find beautiful or something, they always name or point out the stage that it's blossoming. It's like the peak of their blossoming in a way, and for us it's the least interesting stage actually, of the natural process, because that's the moment that it becomes the most aesthetic object. And for us it shows more life after the blossoming, when it starts to wither, or the point that it's growing in a way, because you know then it gets character. So that's also what we also try to capture in our work.
Guus:I think what’s really important in the work and in our way of working also, is giving a lot of attention to things, and giving things time and space. And that's something also we want to continue doing, like if it's getting the commission today and the end result tomorrow, then it doesn't work for us. We like to do things very thorough[ly] and look at things very carefully.
Maarten:And then it's more like a dialogue that you have with the things that you're making, or the materials that you know, that you can react on it again. And it's not just an idea that pops up and then [is] executed and make it, but it's more like you know, you like this dialogue, I guess.