Last weekend I visited the opening of the refurbished Kunsthal in Rotterdam.
The Kunsthal organized a big party, with several performances and new exhibitions; something I couldn't miss :) At four o'clock sharp I met one of my best friends in front of the Kunsthal. Time to go in .. lots of people on the street, but where was the entrance? The old entrance was closed, so we decided to follow the crowd ... finally we entered the building, through what felt as the backdoor... Once we were inside and found out where we could find the performance of The Kik - a Dutch beatgroup - we also heard that the Kunsthal was very proud to introduce her new main entrance .... haha we never found it, because afterwards we also left through that 'backdoor' ... a mystery that still has to be solved...
Despite of the entrance-problems, there was a huge crowd, which made it almost impossible to see any of the Marimekko designs. The retrospective of Marimekko's designs and the meaning of this famous Finnish company over the years was one of the opening exhibitions. I only caught a glimpse of the beautiful designs, patterns and dresses, so I have to go back to take a better look! But, I was lucky that I already could take a sneak peak at these beautiful designs in the book Marimekko in Patterns - a nice gift from my dear friend -. It made me even more curious!
I really admire Marimekko, of course for their designs, patterns and products, but also for their way of doing business. Craftsmanship, quality, knowledge, intuition and pleasure are the basics for their designs. Nowadays Marimekko has stores all over the world, from New York to Tokio, but the production is still based in Finland. In these days of cheap, cheaper and even cheaper than that production, Marimekko explicit chooses to keep the production close to the designers, so improvements can be made easily and they don't lose their craftsmanship and thorough knowledge of their materials and production process.
A nice quote from the book I want to share with you:
"We need dark to see light, grey to grasp colour, work to notice playfulness,
emptiness to appreciate life..."
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