Hand-Made

Over the years I’ve picked up a few beautiful objects from the past - items that would now be considered vintage or old fashioned: a typewriter, a phone with a round number dial and cord receiver, a black Singer sewing machine…

The latter reminded me of the machine my mother had. When I was young she sewed a lot of our clothes. She was a great seamstress. One of my childhood memories involved me and my mom going to Fabricland where we spent a long time looking at the myriad of fabrics on display along with the various clothing patterns. We often ended up going home with not just one pattern or choice of fabric, but two or three!

Mom would then get to work at her sewing table from which would emerge the most beautiful dress or blouse, skirt or shorts, while I waited in eager anticipation to try it on. I was 17 when I bought my first dress from a shop!  But it was not nearly as special as the dresses Mom made for me.  

My father loved to construct things out of wood and had a workshop in the basement of the house. I recall sitting in Dad’s workshop as a kid and gluing bits of wood offcuts together that had fallen on the floor from his carefully crafted pieces of furniture he made for our home when I was young: beds, tables, a bench…

Once he made me a beautiful desk for my 15th birthday. It was such a treasure and still is. To this day, my engineer father loves to invent, design and build new things.

All of these were so unique and well-made.  All of them were handcrafted and based on consistent practice and skill. 

My parents were very influenced by their parents and the nuns and teachers who taught them in school.

Not long ago when they were clearing out their garage, they came across some wooden toys designed and made by my grandfather in his factory: Sliedrecht Speelgoed (Toys).  Sliedrecht Speelgoed was the longest running wooden toy factory in Holland before it had to shut down in the mid 80s partly because of the introduction of plastic toys.

Dad told me that as a young boy he and his father would go to the pavilions on the seashore, selling their fold-up beach chairs. On his most recent visit to Holland, my father went to Noordwijk with his sister. As they walked on the sandy stretches, they stopped to speak to a few of the restaurant clientele, asking if they had any chairs left from my grandfather’s factory. Much to my father’s surprise, one cafe owner brought him through to a back room where stacks of my grandfather’s beautifully designed chairs were stored. They had bought them from my grandfather in the early 70s and had been using them ever since! That’s 50 years ago! The man said that if the chairs were still being made, he would have ordered a whole bunch more.

In the 1970's my grandfather designed a series of tables and benches that just came out at the time I was born (his first grandchild), so he named the series ‘Monique’.  I didn’t really know my grandfather as he died when I was two, but I was privileged to be able to sit on that small bench and at that table when I was a child. My brothers and I would often play with his wooden creations too. And later, when I was older, I was able to visit the site of his factory.

We live in a machine driven and technology run society which supposedly makes things easier (though at another cost), but there is great value in the hand crafted, the analogue, the personal; of taking time on something and mastering it well.

As we head into 2026, it's good to value things made by human beings with loving care; those things that are authentic and original in a world of  algorithms and mass-production. If my grandfather was alive today, I think people would treasure his wooden toys and specially designed furniture more than ever! 

2 January 2026