Nederlands Zilvermuseum Schoonhoven

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Spearheads

• Design, craft and cooperation.
• Revitalization of the craft silversmiths.
• Preserving the craft in general
• Artist in residence, a plus version of the Zilverlab in the Zilvermueum
• Promote the interest in the subject in collaboration with Vocational School and Guild
• Hollyhock stipend (To investigate and promote innovation in the Silversmiths trade)
• Silver symposium (to promote knowledge and scientific research)
• SSA (every 3 years) (to revitalize old techniques and to promote knowledge of the subject)

Stokroos Stipendium and Schoonhoven Silver Award

Description of the project / practice / program

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The Stokroos Stipendium: Design and development of new, innovative and reproducible silver.

Change and improvement often take place under pressure from outside. Competition leads to crowding, competition leads to improvement and innovation.

If competition is absent for too long, disruption is needed to get change and improvement processes going.

Dutch Design has become big because of those disruptive processes; continuous questions "why". It turns sleep processes into a head and sharpens the mind.

The hope is that this will change competition in competition, and that a growth market will emerge instead of a displacement market.

The will to work together must be there; mastersmiths and designers artists and architects who together create beautiful new products. Searching together for innovations in the profession. Trying new techniques, it is possible that we will make use silver again in smaller and larger numbers, so attractive that it will be bought again by a wider audience.

Then the craft has a future again, and the Silver Museum has the future in house.

Together we can expand the collection with new usage silver. And make appealing exhibitions with silver as a shining center.

The Schoonhoven Silver Award 2018 continues to be devoted to the goal of reaching a wider audience and inspiring artists to test and explore the boundaries of their traditional art and craft. More particularly, the Nederlands Zilvermuseum Schoonhoven seeks to invite submissions that bear a direct relationship with the spearheads of the museum’s policy, i.e. stimulating the exploration of new technologies and uses, and innovative art forms. Innovation, as envisioned in the Award’s present edition, would centre on the rejuvenation of older, time-honoured techniques, and on the preservation of an immaterial heritage by injecting dynamic new life.

The above could be pursued by:

• Presenting today’s silversmiths with new artistic and technical challenges;
• Fostering partnerships with silversmiths and other design disciplines, to inspire a new vision and perspective on the traditional techniques applied in silver art and craft;
• Stimulating a knowledge search of silversmithing skills and competencies of bygone eras.

How were practitioners of intangible cultural heritage involved?

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The Innovation Silver is a yearly program, where a Silversmith and a Designer, Architect or Artist work in collaboration. 

If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got before, therefor by disruption, and out-of-the-box thinking will new insights occur. Just by asking: "why", "how" and "where".  Inovation is a different approach.

The Schoonhoven Silver Award 2018 continues to be devoted to the goal of reaching a wider audience and inspiring artists to test and explore the boundaries of their traditional art and craft. More particularly, the Nederlands Zilvermuseum Schoonhoven seeks to invite submissions that bear a direct relationship with the spearheads of the museum’s policy, i.e. stimulating the exploration of new technologies and uses, and innovative art forms. Innovation, as envisioned in the Award’s present edition, would centre on the rejuvenation of older, time-honoured techniques, and on the preservation of an immaterial heritage by injecting dynamic new life of bygone eras.

CV of the author

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Marcel Teheux is an initiator, innovator, thinker and doer – a little self-willed, "out of the box" and with a pinch of humor. His strengths are his very broad background and management experience, combined with educational experience at managerial level. In addition to this versatile background, he gained experience as director of the Designhuis in Eindhoven, known for its Dutch Design exhibitions. That is where his love for museums started and his knowledge about art and culture was refined. From a creative background, which started at the vocational school for Gold and Silversmiths in Schoonhoven, Teheux has become Director of the Dutch Silver Museum Schoonhoven.