Like it or lump it, ceramics were shown in force during Dutch Design Week, ubiquitous in the subtle way that both a tabletop landscape or a single sculptural artifact can be presented in a space without dominating it. Ease of transporting ceramics behooves exhibitors and visitors alike, making them popular souvenirs; take home a teacup as a token of DDW2015 for less than €10.

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A tile from Atelier NL, on the other hand, will set you back €35 — but, as anyone who visited their Earth Alchemy Factory last week knows, the money will go toward a good cause. Staged as an IRL form of crowdfunding to complement a concurrent online campaign, their goal is to permanently install the research/education/production facilities in the modern converted church space that has been their home for some eight years now. With their lease due to expire on November 1st, they've launched a campaign to buy the building, an unassuming creative community hub on a quiet residential block of Eindhoven.

“It's a factory where education, design and production comes together,” notes Atelier NL co-founder Lonny van Ryswyck during a tour of the Earth Alchemy Factory at Bergman Church. “It's not only about producing, but it's also about learning, so people when they come here, they can learn how to make raw materials into products.”

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Indeed, education has been part of their practice since van Ryswyck founded Atelier NL with fellow Design Academy grad Nadine Sterk in 2006. Bringing scientific rigor to examining earth as a material, the two have spent the years since knee-deep in the country for which their studio is named, scouring every corner of the Netherlands in the interest of cataloguing richness of their homeland, which was beautifully displayed in the church during design week.

“That's why we made this huge tile wall, [displaying] all of the clay we collected for eight years,” van Ryswyck explains, noting that they need to sell all of the tiles to raise enough money to buy the church. “The whiter the wall gets, the more people have funded us. If the wall is empty, we survive.”

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An offhand joke that they're creating a religion, during one of the workshops they conducted last week, only underscores the fact that Atelier NL has brought out a kind of sacredness to the material with which they work. If ceramics are appealing precisely because they are humble, usable-yet-aesthetically-pleasing products, it is this notion of provenance that imparts a deeper significance to these objects.

“It's the same as with people,” van Ryswyck muses. “We are all different, we come from different backgrounds, from different streams and rivers, and we have our special ingredients... and when we know these qualities, you [end up with] the best product.”

The wall on Sunday, October 25, with three days to go in the campaign...

Learn more about Atelier NL's Earth Alchemy Factory — and help them with their crowdfunding campaign — on Voordekunst.