Han Koning, Dutch Industrial Designer

I'm Han Koning, I was born in 1975. I was born and raised in Groningen. I studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. I am an industrial designer, which means I design things... that can be manufactured by machines. I mainly work on my own initiative, not on assignment. People can buy what I design after I've done so. At least, that's the idea. In 2001, for HEMA, that was my first real design... I designed a vase for bouquets with flowers with broken stems... which got produced and sold. It was great to still be a student and have a commercial product out there. It was so popular that people still e-mail me... because their cat pushed it off the chimney or whatever. It's important to me to come out with new things every now and then. That's what I like to do most. Working with new materials... developing new ideas on the basis of new materials... and finding a function for them, in my case primarily as light objects. The final form doesn't necessarily matter. I just want to experiment and create things with that material. I want to make a sculpture, a statement. And yes, they're reproducible. So I don't just make one object, though they're all slightly different. But I don't have them in stock. People can't come by on Saturday and immediately take one home. If they order something, it takes five weeks to produce... whether or not it is customized. It's great to do what you like best and be able to earn a living with it.