BACK HOME

Den Bosch // Ceramics Manufacturing

Cor Unum

A social workplace, connecting designers and ceramics makers to bring innovation to the ceramics world.

s
0:00
/
4:52
VIEW ON VIMEO

Den Bosch // Ceramics Manufacturing

Cor Unum

Lotte Landsheer is both a key designer and the company’s director of this social workplace. She works with students, volunteers, people with distance from the workforce, and outside designers to bring innovation to the ceramics industry.

Cor Unum work space

I want to show that people with a disability don't have to make ceramics with disabilities. They can make beautiful things for designers.

Design is a tool to tell my story. I want change to happen.

When you create, you become happy. And when you become happy, you can become better again. That is what Cor Unum stands for.

Unfinished Reglaze

Reglaze is not only reusing old material or waste, it also stands for the people who work here. This is really Cor Unum.

The form is especially made for people who work for two or three hours a week because I think it's very important that they can work in our process.

Finished Reglaze

Every plate, cup, and bowl has a different colour because the reglaze material is made out of assorted glaze waste from Cor Unum's production process.

I want to show that people with a disability don't have to make ceramics with disabilities. They can make beautiful things for designers.

When you create, you become happy. And when you become happy, you can become better again. That is what Cor Unum stands for.

Every plate, cup, and bowl has a different colour because the reglaze material is made out of assorted glaze waste from Cor Unum's production process.

Cor Unum

00:00:19

My name is Lotte Landsheer and I'm working for Cor Unum, Cor Unum is a ceramic factory, Atelier... I create the collection for Cor Unum and I work with people on the work floor. I'm every day in the clay with people and the designers.

00:00:43

In the earlier days, Cor Unum was a production company, and there was one designer and that was my father Zweitze Landsheer, and he designed to the possibility of the people because we are a social workplace, and his beautiful thing was like, okay, what is your disability and how can I put you into the way of working in Cor Unum.

00:01:08

And I want to show that people with a disability don't have to make ceramics with disabilities. They can make beautiful things for designers. I was thinking, I only can survive when I have beautiful designs, so I have to collaborate with them, and I want it. And that was very important for me to show that those two worlds are collaborating perfectly.

Reglaze

00:01:46

The Reglaze is reusing the old glaze. We did do a lot of trials and searching. We try to put as much a waste of glaze into the material of earthenware and stoneware and there is now a kind of new material and we call it Reglaze.

00:02:16

The form is especially made for the people who work for two or three hours a week because I think it's very important that they can make, work in our process also.

00:02:28

And when you create, you become happy. And that is what, Cor Unum stands for. So the Reglaze is not the only reuse old material or waste, but also stands for the people who work here. So this is really Cor Unum.

Collaboration & Student Research

00:02:51

The first thing is to open your doors and to say, okay, you are welcome and we are going to collaborate. Everybody is allowed to see it and please learn of it and please take it with you and do something with it. Because that is how we can survive as a ceramic makers.

00:03:15

This is some examples of searching of a student who wants to look, what can I fire in the porcelain, or the ceramic, or the earthenware. We learn a lot of it because there are natural, uh, things that, that, that eats up the material, and here you see the oranges - it has a kind of, I think of sour[ness].

00:03:42

It is a beautiful start when somebody comes with it - We can start, we can talk about it, yea, there is a way. And we have to, we have to search for it a long way. But yeah, that's how it starts. But it's still the beginning. We have to combine the old know-how in a new direction, that's for sure. I think when you only make the things you can everything ends, the design ends, the knowledge ends. So, you constantly have to take all the old knowledge with you to make and create new knowledge.

00:04:26

I love my job. It's really beautiful. And that is mostly because of working with people. That's the main thing of Cor Unum, and beautiful people make beautiful things with designers.