Something I always remember about my grandparents’ home in Brabant is the little wrought iron table with its ornately curled legs. It had a marble top upon which stood an antique pitcher and basin dating back to the time before houses had running water. Once a bathroom was installed in each home, the pitcher and basin usually ended up in the guest bedroom, and that was where I often slept during weekend visits from East Groningen. Though those road trips were long, they were still fun thanks to word games and guessing games, and roadside stops for coffee served on the car bonnet. Upon our arrival, my grandmother always welcomed us with home-made pie, stuffed with fruit from her own garden. My grandmother was generous, and cut us all similarly generous pieces of pie.
These are precious, sweet memories that I cherish, and that inspire me in my enterprise.
That little table eventually ended up in my possession, and I gave it a new life in my own garden. I replaced the porous marble tabletop with tiles left over after a bathroom remodelling, and I had the wrought iron treated with Hammerite to protect it from the effects of weathering, both now and in the rather uncertain future.
Local plants now grow on the little table in bags made of recycled material; a nod to my grandmother who never discarded anything if she could still find a use for it. This little table is not only a beautiful element in our garden, it’s also a symbol of the sustainability principles I adhere to in my business: reusing materials in order to create solutions that are both aesthetic and eco-friendly.
Every time I embark on a new project, I look at what’s already there and try to figure out what we can reuse and how. There’s often much more than you realise, and that’s something my grandmother knew very well too.