Steven Lummel X Tomasu
Collaboration with Steven Lummel
What’s this all about… Does it matter? Not sure. All we know is we had serious fun doing this project with Steven. Steven who? Steven van Lummel. During his study at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) Steven worked on a social sculpture. This materialized in many different projects under the umbrella of the SBSC (Stichting ter Bevordering der Sociale Contacten) a foundation for improving social contacts. Building this social sculpture never stopped. For proof… go check is resume. From artist, club owner and musician to podcast and festival host… all-in-all he’s worth a follow. Go and check www.stevenvanlummel.nl or www.instagram.com/stevenvanlummel.
We were totally unaware of all the above. But we can tell you something about our first encounter with Steven. It all started in early 2021, when we drove up to Den Haag to pick up an artwork we purchased via Instagram. The conversation soon steered into the soy sauce direction and within a matter of minutes… Steven unwrapped several, delicate looking, Japanese paint brushes and dropped down on his knees to start painting with our soy sauce he just opened. No further explanation required.
Soon after Steven visited our brewery we agreed to wait for a natural alibi to do something together. The alibi turned out to be his first solo art exhibition (Half Full / Half Empty) in The Hague. A total of 100 unique, hand painted bottles were presented and sold during this exhibition. The event ended with happy faces and a promise that we would join him if he would land another exhibition in Tokyo. Easy promise to make… as we never expected this to happen. But it did. So, the initial art show was followed by another one in Tokyo (October 2023). And we kept our promise.
So if we are honest… it was Steven who made us book our first tickets to Japan. The four of us never visited Japan before this moment. Rest assured that our must-see-list is way too long for just one trip. We ended up staying for 5 days in Tokyo. Of which one day was fully dedicated to Steven’s exhibition. The rest of that trip is not for this newsletter. We want to leave it by saying that it’s hard to describe what it meant for us to ‘launch’ our soy sauce together with Steven in Japan’s capital.
The pictures speak for themselves. On the inside of the bottle, you’ll find our signature soy sauce. No surprises there. The outside however is for every single bottle unique.
