Minke Products Information

Minke was born in Utrecht in 1965, The Netherlands. At a young age she spent her time drawing and making sculptures. Beside this, she enjoyed her childhood, playing around with all kinds of animals. Minke went to the School of Arts, Minerva, in Groningen, and studied in the direction of painting and sculpting. To complete her study's, she moved to the city of Arnhem. At ArtEZ, School of Arts, she studied Product Design. In 1991 she finished her study's presenting a cupboard system with the name 'Vogelkastje', produced till 2002 by Castelijn Collection, The Netherlands. Also the lamp 'Swing' went into production at Artimeta, Heerlen, The Netherlands. Soon after, Minke joined a cooperation with furniture designer Gerard Vollenbrock. They worked very good as a team. Many items went into production at various company's. They built a pleasant studio together, on the Greek Island of Serifos. In 1996 a series of products, designed by Minke, came into production at Cascando, Westervoort, The Netherlands. These products; with the names Tango, Cobalt and Za Za were also the first products for this fine company and are still being produced with care. Meanwhile, Minke took a side job as a cabin attendant at KLM, to travel around the world for a year or ten. This part gave her the biggest insights of working with people of different cultures. In 1999 Minke moved to Amsterdam for four years; to spend some time there. During this period she mainly worked for the huge project in Almere, Atelier Ijmeer in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. After this project was mainly finished Minke moved back to Arnhem to focus on her own design projects. From 2002 Minke went to Guangzhou several times, China, where she was invited for an orientation in order to inventory the furniture industry. At the moment Minke is working on new design projects and it is expected that there will be several new products on the market.