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Walnut music boxes from England with the mysterious Labradorite!
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Hi reader!
Tomorrow morning (Monday) it will be that time again and the webshop will open for three days.
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This is my new approach to keep making boxes in a fun way, and I like it. I hope you do too :)
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Despite the huge crowds surrounding the film premiere last weekend, we still managed to make boxes for the next three days.
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This also includes the first boxes of an iconic tree from Utrecht:
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The famous red beech from 1843
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1843-2020
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The red beech stood on Emmalaan for over 170 years and was beloved by many for its solitary beauty. Unfortunately, it was lost to fungal infestation in 2020.
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Lively & difficult wood
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The fungal attack gave the wood a lively structure, but it also made it difficult to work, but we succeeded!
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Another special tree from which some boxes have been made is
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The Adam oak from 1619
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A box made of wood from Adam's crown! The oldest tree in the province of Utrecht, along with Eva (Stoutenburg Estate, Leusden). Forest ranger Joris always has special wood for Rob!
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Adam in 2024. Without a crown. To his left is Eve. If you click on the photo, you can read the full story. Joris also wrote an article in the magazine, which you'll read more about later in this post.
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And more boxes from Hoeksche Waard, Texel, Zeeland, Amsterdam, and England. As always, you can choose the melody and have it engraved for each box.
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Lude Wind-Up Music Box with Labradorite Walnut from England (Glastonbury)
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Robin Opwind Music Box with Ammonite Maple from 1901 Utrecht (Manenburg)
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Mini Music Box Piccolo Wind-up with robin. Es from Utrecht (Wilhelminapark)
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The festive premiere evening still resonates
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On Saturday, May 10th, the documentary Mr. Eigenbaard made about Rob and his music boxes had its festive premiere at Museum Speelklok. 300 people attended. The evening was musically enhanced by Reinier Sijpkens, and even Alfredo Sirica, the Italian film composer, was there!
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It will be a while before the film is shown again. We hope to be selected for a film festival after the summer. We'll keep you updated! Rob has created a beautiful magazine based on the film, full of images from the film, background information, interviews, and stories. You can order it in the webshop.
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Magazine The Gold of the Sun
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54 pages of inspiring content after 10 years of making music boxes.
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The end of Rob's Shop and Workshop
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A few days after the premiere, Rob learned that the lease on his home and shop ends on September 1st. The owner is renovating. This means that both the workshop (being demolished to make way for new housing) and the shop, as seen in the film, will no longer exist by then!
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So Utrecht has essentially declared Rob an outlaw. And he's not losing any sleep over it; on the contrary, a new adventure awaits! Will it be Drenthe, Limburg, perhaps Belgium, or perhaps Italy? Anything is possible. The key is finding the right foundation where he can fit in and move forward. His woodworking studio is a perfect fit for a community, an estate, an ecovillage, or a cultural heritage site being repurposed. Tips are welcome.
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But we're not there yet, first the three-day event that starts on Monday morning, May 19.
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