RCA via Mecedes & Iris Van Herpen
WIP
Project Boulle — Making my SIP reality
Project Boulle is a platform that I’m building together with cabinetmaker Joseph Blaise to bring crafts like marquetry to a new audience. Marquetry is a woodworking technique with immense potential that has been around for over thousands of years. Traces of the craft date back to the ancient Egyptians! It is the art of creating intricate ornaments using veneer and other materials. It’s a beautiful craft that we want to make accessible to people and hope that it can regain popularity at home or in the design process.
Project Boulle box mockup
Project Boulle
It started out as an idea last year. Long before, I already had this thought about wanting to do include my passion for cabinetmaking and craft in a project or something that could bring it back to live. During my placement year, I thought that this could be the time to explore it and maybe create something small. I had no idea that it would find so much positive resonance in the people I talked to. It even caught the interest of some people at Mercedes where I was interning at the time. I was able to further develop my idea through the Bambuu Incubator program. The extra support helped me to build my idea into what it is now. Although it was quite a busy time, considering I was working a full-time internship on the side and participating in live-briefs. I think I can say that building up this idea has been one off the most stressful times in my life. It also came with a lot of anxiety that all of it got so serious so quick, I had barely time to grasp what was actually happening. In the end, I took some time to step back and reflect on my goals and my direction. Considering my skills and what I might be lacking, I convinced my friend Joseph to join the project. We had met during our cabinetmaking studies in Belgium which sparked our passion for anything woodwork and we shared the idea of wanting to bring it back out in the world. Since then, we have been working for around a year on our goal now. We’re almost ready to launch our kit that allows people to try out marquetry for themselves.
My graduation is coming up soon and I’m going on to study the Innovation Design Engineering program at the RCA which I’m convinced is going to help me take the next steps and build my ideas up even more. What started as a small thought in my head has taken on more and more speed and is building up into a beautiful thing. I couldn’t have imagined it ever going this far but I’m happy that my passion has been so well received by everyone. We recently launched our instagram page @projectboulle — come visit to learn more about our journey and anything that didn’t fit in this article!