Jan Bom

Stefan Balkenhol (1957) makes art with humor. His businessmen always wear a white shirt and black trousers. But sometimes such a sculpture holds a teddy bear pressed against its chest. Or the businessman hangs high on the neck of a giraffe. Or he sits backwards […]

Being allowed to take wood carving lessons from a master wood carver. That is a rare opportunity in the Netherlands. Not many other craftsmen than Jan van Harskamp can restore a classic mantelpiece in a palace to its perfectly original state. Learning the craft from

Waving wood. Look at the strings on that violin. They are carved from wood. That curved sheet music paper. That stem of those tulips. According to legend, Grinling Gibbons (1648 – 1721) had a vase with wooden flowers hanging in front of the door of

Mary mourns, that is quite clear. She stands at the foot of the cross, beneath the dying Christ. The fact that a sculptor depicted human emotions in such a natural way made Claus Sluter (1350-1406) a great innovator in art. His realism paved the way

Charcoal is her medium. With it she draws meter-high landscapes on canvas. Dutch jungles. Nature that is allowed to go its own way. Biodiversity. Anouk Griffioen’s canvases are of museum quality. Good artists with biodiversity as a theme are few and far between. For this

Intriguing news. In a cave in Morocco, 33 shell beads were found, which must be about 150 thousand years old. They would be the first jewelry in the world. But is that really so? Wouldn’t the first ornaments have been made of wood? Undoubtedly. But