Last week I showed you a pendant lamp called Empty Mailbag that was made from an upcycled original vintage Dutch mailbag. Former Dutch mail service, PTT post [now Post nl], used fantastic looking bags with typo on it and three stripes symbolizing the Dutch flag. The one featured today is a newer mailbag, from the year 2000, without stripes. This upcycle design pendant lamp, called ‘Used Mailbag1‘ is also made from a different fabric, it uses a plastic fiber.

Dutch mailbag shows a piece of history

Most of the mailbags I have left from the bunch my girlfriend brought with her are bags with stripes, but a few are like this one, without stripes.  Like I said before, for me these mailbags tell a story because of the important purpose they had. Millions of letters have been transported using them, from love letters to invoices. Day in, day out, creating stains, little holes, marks and scratches.
The Empty Mailbag shows a vintage used Dutch mailbag upside down, symbolizing a mailbag after the job is done, empty. Well, this pendant lamp just shows the mailbag that is old and used with wrinkles.

Number 1 in the name stands for the start of a series. The thing I wanted was that the bag would be in the shape of a cylinder. I wanted to show the mailbag in all its glory, like Empty Mailbag, without changing to much of its shape. Only with this design I cut out the bottom to get the shape of a cylinder and to make it a little more different I wanted the bottom line not to be horizontal. I cut it so it would have an angle.
The struggle I had was I wanted to attach the fabric at the bottom of the design to an iron ring. Here my mother-in-law had to come to the rescue. She’s very experienced in working with needle and thread and luckily managed to finish the job. I’m very happy with the end product, but I still have to figure out a way to make it less time consuming.

Photo © Gilbert de Rooij

Design by Gilbert de Rooij | upcycleDZINE