Design Publisher Thomas Eyck Closes Label with Beautifully Stylized Urn Designed by Aldo Bakker

A beautifully stylized urn with lid, designed on request by designer Aldo Bakker. With this, publisher Thomas Eyck (58) will close his design label after more than sixteen years. The urn, his 238th product, appears in an edition of ten numbered copies.

Number 1 is for himself, says Eyck with a smile. “I also asked Aldo for a coffin. Nice but not too nice, I said. A beautiful felt blanket from Studio Dust will be placed over the box.”

He likes unusually designed things around him, says Eyck. “Even at the end. I allow myself that pleasure.”

With his wife Reina, councilor in Leeuwarden, he had a diving holiday in Madagascar in October. He dived to a depth of 35 meters without any pain. In December he got a nasty cough. His doctor didn’t trust it. After a lung X-ray, Eyck received the result on January 20: metastatic lung cancer stage 4. Without treatment, he was expected to live another 3 to 6 months.

After two chemotherapy treatments, he felt much better and was already making travel plans: maybe he could go to Africa again in September. But the month of April he spent in the hospital with pneumonia, a side effect of the first immunotherapy. He stopped the cures and now only takes anti-inflammatories.

Eyck: “That may sound dramatic, but it gives me peace. The situation is clear: I live in spare time. Soon the two of us are going to France for a few weeks. Every day a short drive, sleep in beautiful hotels and good food. That’s my main goal now. Then we will see further.”

Eyck is the most important publisher of contemporary design products in the Netherlands. At his request, more than twenty designers designed products that were created using traditional techniques such as tin casting, flax carding and reed braiding. From the start, the results were so special that the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen organized an exhibition in 2017 about the first ten years of van Eyck’s company.

He is a late bloomer, the road to his business was full of bumps and potholes. Eyck tells this at the table in his eighteenth-century Frisian farmhouse in Easternijtsjerk. Sometimes he points around to the many designs of his publishing house, such as the multicolored striped wallpaper by graphic designer Irma Boom or the lamps by Christien Meindertsma.

Does the disease make you angry?

“I have smoked for exactly forty years. On my 18th birthday my parents gave me a stereo because I had never smoked. A few weeks later I went camping with friends in Renesse. Because of the mosquitoes I lit my first cigarette there. I don’t blame myself. Fortunately, Reina doesn’t either. When I look at old photos, I almost always enjoy myself with a cigarette.”

“I had to get used to the idea that I will die soon. But the fact that I can say goodbye to family and friends and to be in charge of my funeral is a godsend to me.”

Were you interested in design from an early age?

“My father (entrepreneur and art collector Jo Eyck, ed.) had only completed primary education. A trauma for him: his children had to go to university. When I received a HAVO advice, my parents cried. After high school I had no idea what to do next. With great difficulty I then obtained my athenaeum diploma. A friend who studied architecture in Delft invited me to walk with them for a day. Then I decided to study there.”

In?

“I was deeply unhappy in Delft. I had no idea where my passion lay and threw myself into corporate life. At five o’clock in the afternoon I went to ‘the business’, to the club. Slap and brass. What happened there was sometimes much worse than what you now read about the Groningen student corps.”

“My salvation was that I met Reina in my second year. After half a year she stopped with architecture and went to study law in Utrecht. An eye opener for me. I went straight to my parents to tell them that I was going to study art history in Utrecht. They sputtered that I would never find a job later. But I persevered. A crucial moment. At the age of 23 I decided for the first time what happened in my life.”

Why did you like that study?

“I felt comfortable in my own skin and had good teachers. When the Academy of Industrial Design Eindhoven, now the Design Academy, was looking for students for research, I ended up in an intriguing world. I graduated from that research. Suddenly everything was running smoothly.”

With his degree in his pocket, Eyck again had no idea what he was going to do. He worked, among other things, at an art dealership annex frame maker, and at the paint wholesaler founded by his grandfather. During a visit to the Kortrijk furniture fair – “I kept following design out of curiosity” – he saw an aluminum cabinet by the minimalist Belgian designer Maarten Van Severen.

“So beautiful and fragile, it seemed like she was floating. I realized: design is my passion, I have to do something with it.”

A short time later he became a salesman in a hip furniture store in Amsterdam. Until one day an old acquaintance stepped in, Jan Tichelaar, the then director of the Tichelaar ceramics factory in Makkum. In Delft they had lived in the same student house.

The ceramics factory wanted to do more with modern design, Tichelaar said. Whether Eyck knew someone who could help with that. When he told his wife that evening, she put him on the right track again. “She said: Hello, Thomas, what do you think of yourself?”

For seven years Eyck helped as a marketing man to find an audience for the Tichelaar products of leading designers and architects such as Hella Jongerius and Ettore Sott-sass.

Why did you start your own design label in 2007?

“Transforming an almost worthless raw material like clay into a valuable product is fascinating. But there are so many other beautiful materials and crafts. I suggested setting up a sub-label for tin, leather, glass and wood products. After some thought, Jan said: we have our hands full with ceramics. Without ever intending to, I started my own company.”

“I got off to a flying start. Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel, then Studio Job together, considered it an honor to design my first collection. And during the fair in Milan I was allowed to exhibit their products for free in the gallery of Rossana Orlandi. A year after the start I was already making a profit. And in my peak year, in 2017, I turned over more than a million.”

What did you envision at the time?

“I wanted to place orders for exclusive handicraft products. The designer, the material and the craftsmen involved had to be equally valuable. Because these are such intensive projects and I often had to consult with the makers, I absolutely wanted to work with Dutch producers.”

“It was often difficult to convince the artisans. Those companies have sometimes worked in a certain way for a hundred years. Then I told them: if you want to move into modern times, you will have to adapt and innovate. My assignment would bring about a change of mind, I hoped. Unfortunately, that didn’t really work out. Some of those craft businesses I worked with have disappeared.”

How does the design process go?

“First I think of a material, say reed. I’m looking for a designer. Because reed is such a hard material, I wanted a feminine handwriting: Scholten & Baijings. I release the designers; they determine what kind of products it will be. When there are problems, I always go for the best solution. At the end I calculate what a product should cost.”

“I now know that I can explain to my customers why some of my products are so expensive. When Aldo Bakker wanted to make copper table pieces with electrolysis, it resulted in very laborious products. For example, a 4,000 euro soybean oil pourer of which I have only sold four copies.”

My sister is a gallery owner. She says about many items from my collection: ‘They remain consumer products.’ I can’t do much with a comment like that. I make products with cultural added value that you can feel. That soybean oil jug looks something like a sculpture by Brancusi to me. She feels like a soulmate, beyond the product. Still, I like that she can also drip very nicely.”

Would you like to demonstrate something with your handcrafted products?

“When I just started, revaluation of the handicraft was definitely an approach of mine. But all things considered, I am a selfish entrepreneur. I do what I want to do. And I have the conviction that if my products are well made, my customers feel the same as I do.”

“I struggled for a long time to find my way. I am very fortunate that I finally succeeded. Doing what touches me, that is the basis of how I live. That applies to how I maintain our garden, how I spend my holidays, to my company, to everything.”

What have you accomplished with your label?

“That exhibition in the Zuiderzee Museum filled me with pride. But I don’t suffer from what I call the Jo Eyck obsession. My father was a great art collector and wanted to leave something behind, a museum in Limburg. I’ve always chased my own pleasure. I consider the fact that 80 percent of my collection is ultimately included in museums all over the world as a nice by-catch.”

Are there things you still want to do?

“No. I have a wonderful life. Just a little short. I would have loved to live another ten, twenty or thirty years longer. But when I see the misery in the waiting room of the hospital, the young people there who have never been in love, then I have nothing to complain about. I am at peace with my situation. Rest, that’s what I feel. I am mainly concerned with simple things. Have the hedges cut, make sure the woodwork is painted in the fall.”