LINER NOTES FOR 'VERVLOGENHEDEN', AN ALBUM BY MY FRIEND S. VAN DER TOORN (AURAL CANYON, 2022), WITH COVER ART BY DAX NIESTEN. SANDER SENT ME THE JAPANESE TRANSLATION OF THE LINER NOTES (no obi) WHICH I HAVE DEPICTED HERE. #s van der toorn #vervlogenheden #album #dax niesten #aural canyon #liner notes #2022

2022 . CURATOR ORIGINAL CP MAGAZINES (985 - 993) FOR CP COMPANY DIGITAL ARCHIVE. In addition to an article I wrote with Daniela Facchinato Osti about the early CP Company Magazines, the brand asked me to 'curate' these magazines for their new digital archive. I decided to 'create' a digital issue of the old magazine, showcasing what is was, what made it stand-out, which pages reoccured and what changed over the years. Here's the link to the C.P. Company digital archive . Click each picture for a short text.

2021 . CP COMPANY MAGAZINE FALL WINTER 021. TIMELESS DESIGN ARTICLE. Article about ten timeless design items, selected by CP Company designers Paul Harvey and Alessandro Pungetti. The most difficult thing was to bring the immense and mouthwatering product stories back to just a few words. The final versions accompany photo's of the ceramic versions of the specific products. As always it is an honor to contribute to a brand that has been part of my life since the 1980's. Sculptures by CERAMICHE_1. Photography by SARA SCANDEREBECH.

2021. FELBM. ELEMENTS OF NATURE. LINER NOTES. Artist FELBM asked me to write liner notes for his album Elements of Nature. Given his high level of quality and his specific approach in every way, I kept in mind that my writings wouldn't make it to the final product. But they did and now my work is part of this beautiful piece of art. I wrote my first 'haiku' for this project. Elements of nature was released November 6th 2021, as a cassette tape with an accompanying book and as a digital download at Bandcamp. As of March 2023 the album is also available as a vinyl set.

2010/2011. FUTURE TIME. BRIGHT MAGAZINE. Articel on the URWERK-203 wristwatch. This completely new concept of mechanical time keeping really shook me. The looks, the technical execution and especially the idea of 'orbital timekeeping', have never been equalled since. The point was to get rid of the nervous system of ticking seconds and replace it with a completely relaxed and slow change of hands. As if time ran without gravity. Truly original and I was happy to write about it. The article is DUTCH, but you can take a look here. #urwerk #ur203 #watch #watches #innovative watchmaking

2013. Camouflage. CODE MAGAZINE. Article on contemporary use of camouflage, military as well as non-military. Code Magazine was a forward-looking source, documenting style. I was lucky enough to write for them for several years. Camouflage has always been one of my main interests. You can read the article here (pdf).

2020. Liner Notes. Roos Jonker & Dean Tippet album. My first liner notes! I am blessed that I was asked to contribute to this wonderful record by Dutch singer-songwriters Roos Jonker and Dean Tippet, with Eelco Topper. I heard the songs several times before its release and wrote down for Dean what listening to his music did with my thoughts. He loved it and wanted to use it as liner notes. Seriously? Seriously! I have been dreaming of writing liner notes since my youth, so I couldn’t resist. A great gift to be part of so much art in sound and vision. Thanks my friend, another dream came true, thanks to you (and Roos). Artwork by Dax Niesten / Art of Dax. 

1998. Paper on ceteacea. Caribbean Journal of Science. This is where my professional writing started. During the 1990 I was pursuing a career as biologist. One of my life goals and dreams, was to publish on cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) in a scientific journal. In 1995 I conducted a field research project, to find out which species of whales and dolphins are actually sighted in the waters surrounding the Dutch Antillean islands of Curacao and Bonaire. This meant: be at sea every day and try to get photographed visual observations and have the pictures determined by an expert. It was a very important time in my life. I learned a lot of life lessons. Shortly after the research, I started as a junior copywriter at TBWA\ Amsterdam. The collected data were published in 1998, I am the third author but wrote the article. The second author had nothing to do with my research, but that is how scientist help each other adding publications to their names. 

2020. Interview with the designer Paul Harvey. CP Company Magazine (due to Corona only published online). In his article designer Paul Harvey explains the design proces that turned a vintage Italian army cape into contemporary performance edge. An old army cape in the Massimo Osti Archive led to a new camouflage capsule collection in the C.P. Company SS2020 collection. Paul Harvey was interested in the WWII camouflage and applied innovative techniques to create a modern print out of it. Harvey is a legendary designer as he designed Stone Island for many years after founder Osti had left the building in 1994. Paul has been designer CP Company for several years now.  

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2018. Proper Magazine (issue 28). Article ‘Mass Appeal’. Addressing some issues with the remarkable C.P. Company capsule collection that was designed with Kasabian singer Serge Pizzorno. In 2018, some online comments suggested that the  C.P. Company capsule collection that was designed with Kasabian singer Serge Pizzorno, was so bad that ‘Massimo would turn in his grave’ or words of that effect. I was intrigued by the comments and after some thinking I decided to write ‘why Massimo would’t’ and why the collection was pure C.P. and Massimo. Based upon some facts (no personal opinions here) and armed with another rare private picture of the God of Streetwear (I had done that same thing years, earlier with the purple ice jacket picture in 2010) it became one of the best sold issues of Proper Magazine in the history of the world. Read or download the article here. 

2017. Proper Magazine. Article on The Return of Twin Peaks. The Manchester-based print magazine Proper allowed me to do what I like so much: write about things that I love. Twin Peaks is one of them. It changed me, it changed my way of looking at things and therefor it changed my life from the first minute I witnessed it in 1990. I was happy to (re-)introduce the phenomenon to Proper readers, including a lot of people who weren’t even born during the first TP season, early 1990. Article is written to be a sort of reference guide for those who wanted to find out more, just before Season 3 aired. It contains some history and lots of links. I couldn’t have predicted that this third season would be so damn good. You can check the article here, if you like. 

2019. Article about The Watches Of Massimo Osti. Fratellowatches.com. Another example of bringing my personal interests together. This article is about the watches of Massimo Osti. It was created in close co-operation with Osti’s first wife and photographer, mrs. Daniela Facchinato and the Massimo Osti Archive. The Osti-family really did a lot work to get this right and bring Massimo’s beloved watches together with some of his best creations. All pictures by mrs. Daniela Facchinato. You can read it here, online. 

2017. Contributions to the first printed Speedy Tuesday Magazine ever.     In 2017 Fratellowatches’ mr Speedy Tuesday RJ Broer asked me to contribute to the First Speedy Tuesday Magazine ever. I wrote several articles for this unique print magazine. A great honor and very nice to do this for the watch that started it all for me in the late 1980′s. 

2018. Several contributions to Fratello’s Omega Seamaster 300M Diver Magazine (print). Fratellowatches asked me to contribute to a print magazine about Omga’s Seamaster 300. A job that brought me to the Omega headquarters and archives for the first time in my life. I contributed almost half of the articles, varying from stories about the late free-diver Jacques Mayol (remember the move Le Grand Bleu?), the brutally murdered sailing champion and protector of nature Sir Peter Blake, to more technical input about Omega’s part in the evolution of diving watches, the Helium-valve and diving bells and more. Above an example of my work for the mag. (When I was there, I wore Elvis Presley’s watch for a while. Nobody noticed. Same goes for that freakin’ sexy golden Flightmaster I had on for 48 hours). 

2019. Fratellowatches. Article. Why the Speedmaster X-33 matters. Article on the (importance of the) digital Speedmaster Professional, the current NASA and ESA watch. Originally written a view years earlier, but reposted and rewritten with/ by Fratello founder Robert-Jan Broer, the founder of Fratellowatches and #SpeedyTuesday. Thanks to him, I can still find some pleasure in writing about watch-related topics.This article is an example of that. 

2017.  Article on the knives that went to space. English. Fratellowatches. Fratellowatches enabled me to write about marginal phenomena concerning watches. Another example of that is this piece that I wrote about one of my many interests: The Astronaut’s Knife. I have always been interested in clothes, equipment and and gear used by astronauts in space. You can read it online, by clicking here.