April 28, 2021

Dutch brand Moooi produces ‘impossible’ flower chair

Filed under: Design,Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:00 am

Dutch design brand Moooi has partnered with Argentinian 3D artist Andrés Reisinger to mass-produce his Hortensia chair, also known as “the chair that could not be made”.

Back in 2018, Reisinger designed the chair as a ‘digital’ piece of furniture, but it has now been made into a physical chair covered in 30,000 fabric petals, available in the original pink as well as grey. This chair is said to be the first time that a product designed for the digital world has gone into mass production. The updated version being released by Moooi features a steel frame, rather than wood, covered in injection-moulded foam, while using lightweight polyester fabric laser-cut into long, scalloped strips that are then bunched together into clusters of 40 petals each. Moooi used special sewing machines to sew the petal modules onto a thick, elastic backing textile that is then wrapped around the chair.

“The Hortensia was considered impossible to produce – and yet here we are,” said Moooi CEO Robin Bevers.

(Link and image: dezeen.com)

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April 22, 2020

Artist paints on toilet paper, strings it up in Utrecht

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 4:58 pm

Currently stranded in The Netherlands due to the Coronavirus crisis, American artist Daniel Miller, 33, has recently been painting tulips on toilet paper and hanging it around Utrecht. He needed to get something artistic out of his system, something ‘positive and absurd’, he said, and tulips on loo roll definitely qualifies.

On his art you can read the text “If you see me, you can take me”, in Dutch. Free art – we love free stuff in this country! He’s a quick study.

Daniel came to The Netherlands to get inspired and visit friends, but one hour after he landed, the Corona measures kicked in and he was destined to hang out with us a while longer.

Every day Daniel goes around town and hangs up his painted toilet paper tulips, hoping to bring some hope and happiness to people. “The Coronavirus is unavoidable. What surprises me is our reaction to it. How we blame each other, how we panic and come up with conspiracy theories.”

Be sure to check him out on instagram.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl)

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January 9, 2019

Dutch ‘Rambo’ tulips at the Golden Globe Awards

Filed under: Film,Nature by Orangemaster @ 2:59 pm

The Dutch flower bulb company Borst from the wee town of Obdam, North Holland are now world famous for having provided the bouquets of tulips for the Golden Globe Awards, with a whopping 10,000 individual tulips having been ordered.

When the company received the order for the tulips from the United States, which doesn’t happen very often, they were kept in the dark about what they were for. Soon after the event aired, they got a message about what they were for and saw their product all over the news.

The fun part is, the Golden Globe opted for a type of tulip called ‘Rambo’, like the movie. “It’s a tulip that is heavy and gives big flowers,” explains Menno Boots from Borst.

(Link and photo: nhnieuws.nl)

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January 25, 2018

Dutch florist to donate kidney to competitor

Filed under: Health,Science by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm
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A florist in the town of Oostvoorne, South Holland has agreed to donate one of his kidneys to his competitor.

Jan, 62 and a florist, has a genetic kidney disease, inherited from his father who died at age 69. Jan’s problems are not yet critical, but he’ll need a kidney soon. Dick, 55 and a competing florist, is a match and is willing to donate his kidney to Jan. Sadly, Jan’s two sons also have the same genetic disease, but at least they’ll have a father for a much longer time if all goes well, and hopefully more resources to solve their predicament.

Everybody who knows Jan and Dick in Oostvoorne are impressed with the gesture. “I barely take aspirin. I can do without one of my kidneys”, says Dick. Jan was speechless when he found out that Dick was willing to donate one of his kidneys. “You’re not going bankrupt are you?” said Jan to Dick when Dick came over to tell him the good news. “No, I came to tell you I’m going to give you a kidney”.

Dick found out that Jan needed a kidney through two social workers. And although he did talk about donating with this wife, he says he went behind her back to the hospital first to see if he was a match.

You can bet the media will be covering this when it happens.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)

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March 21, 2017

Spring is here, tulips from Amsterdam

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:49 am

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It’s spring in the polder and sometimes it’s good to stop and admire the tulips. Well, mostly daffodils at the moment on the side of the road, but you get the idea.

You may know the song ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’ made popular by Max Bygraves in the UK in 1958, but maybe you didn’t know it was a translation of a German song. According to Wikipedia, the song was first written in 1953 as ‘Tulpen aus Amsterdam’ by German singer, songwriter and entertainer Klaus-Günter Neumann, after he had performed at the Tuschinski theatre in Amsterdam and visited the tulip fields at Keukenhof.

Here’s Max’s version and of course a Dutch version by Herman Emmink.

And here’s a classic performance in the 1928 Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam not far from 24oranges HQ by Dutch pop singer Wilma Landkroon when she was a little girl.

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August 3, 2015

New type of orchid discovered on an island

Filed under: Dutch first,Nature by Orangemaster @ 5:20 pm

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Last June a new type of orchid was discovered in the Netherlands on the island of Schiermonnikoog by orchid expert Hans Dekker who spotted it just in time to add it to his book on orchids in the Northern Netherlands published recently.

The orchid in question is the Dactylorhiza purpurella that usually grows in European coastal regions in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. It’s surprising to the experts why nobody saw this orchid before, maybe it simply hadn’t been noticed according to some.

(Link: natuurbericht.nl, Photo: Hans Dekker)

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December 27, 2012

‘No flowers for the Pope’ on Facebook gaining momentum

Filed under: Online,Religion by Orangemaster @ 2:50 pm
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After weeks of debating the ‘Zwarte Piet’ tradition during Sinterklaas, which involves blackface considered a tradition here but racist abroad, a steady number of Dutch people on Facebook are now pissed off at the Pope.

The Pope’s famous Dutch saying, “bedankt voor de bloemen” (“thanks for the flowers”), is often the first thing that pops to mind if you mention the Pope to a Dutch person. The Facebook page Geen bloemen naar de Paus (‘No flowers for the Pope’) wants to stop sending flowers to the Pope at Easter and is venting its anger at the Pope’s heteronormative Christmas speech, which angered Foreign Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans who lashed out in the media at the Pope’s ‘homophobia’:

“If every person is unique, as the Pope’s representative said in Dublin last week, then why should that unique person not have the right to stand up for their own sexual orientation? Marriage between two people of the same sex is having respect for the uniqueness of the individual.”

I for one will never, ever get over the amount of child abuse reported from the Catholic church since I was old enough to understand what it was.

The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriages, although some controversy remains over municipal officials who refuse to marry gays and lesbians on religious grounds.

Regardless, to quote a gay friend back in the 1990s inspired by the American’s first Bush administration: “Hate is not a family value”.

(Link: www.gaystarnews.com)

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March 26, 2012

Keukenhof flower gardens opened with Polish theme

Filed under: Art,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:48 pm

Last Thursday the Keukenhof bulb gardens in Lisse (between Amsterdam and The Hague) opened its doors for its yearly exhibition.

This year’s theme is “Poland, Heart of Europe”, which is celebrated amongst others with a 50,000 flowering bulb portrait of composer Chopin.

The park will remain open until May 20, and expects to receive about 900,000 visitors.

If you would like to know what Keukenhof is about, Flickr is your friend. (Although that stream also shows photos of flower fields that have nothing to do with the Keukenhof.)

(Photo: Keukenhof.nl. Link: Los Angeles Times.)

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March 18, 2010

Bring your whore some flowers

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:43 pm
Moulin Rouge

Youth television and radio channel BNN has declared 15 March ‘National Whore’s Day’. They surely mean well and believe sex workers should be given a bouquet of roses as a token of appreciation for their hard work. It already sounds too much like North America’s ‘Secretary’s Day’ now known as the more politically correct ‘Administrative Professionals Day’. There’s also Mother’s Day that made it over to the Netherlands and again involves giving flowers. I see a pattern here.

According to estimates, since actual numbers are hard to come by, some 0.6% of Dutch women between the ages of 15 and 46 can be classified as sex workers, including someone with a sugar daddy, a rich man who gives out money or expensive gifts to poorer, younger women in return sexual favours. (Yup, you’re a whore too, girlfriend).

Also according to this article, some 300,000 Dutch men frequent whores a few times a year. “Let us hope that clients [men] have time today [15 March] to bring the working girls some flowers. They should also buy flowers for their partners while they are at it, since surveys show that 70 to 80% of pro’s clients have partners.

(Link: kennislink.nl)

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March 22, 2009

Brick flowers in a brick barge on a brick gable

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Branko Collin @ 11:05 am

This is a gable decoration on the building of the Bloemenlust flower auction house on the Oosteinderweg in Aalsmeer just South of Amsterdam. I ran into it today while biking through the neighbourhood. It’s carved entirely out of brick. The text—abreviated here and there—reads Bloemenlust Coöperatieve Veilingsvereeniging (Bloemenlust co-operative auction association).

After a merger in 1968 with the Centrale Veiling and a subsequent move to a new location, the 1922 building became a restaurant. The new auction would go on the become the largest in the world for flowers, housed in the second largest building in terms of floor space.

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