this year marks my 20th anniversary of being a self employed designer and illustrator with my own brand. In 2003 I made 4 dolls which i sold to a local store in maastricht. I started making more dolls, all handmade and delivered by me to shops around the country, packed in a little red suitcase and we travelled by train. After a while I started working with a social workplace nearby and they made the dolls  which was now a collection of also musicboxes, pramcords, dummyholders and much more. It was a lovely time with lovely people. after three years i was contacted by a german couple who saw my work at a trade show and co-owned a family run textile workplace in thailand. by moving my collection to thailand i had a 1000 more options in creating and again i was so lucky to be working with the nicest people. this brand was called ‘esthex’, a name i came up with pretty quickly on a monday morning when it was time to order labels for my products. because i didn’t give it much thought i soon started to not like the name and after 14 years it felt time to say goodbye. but in this process i realised there were many things i liked to change. less logistics, more time to draw and create with no boundaries. with paper always being my biggest love, ted and tone was born.