Practical Art: The Slowcooker

Margriet Foolen’s Slowcooker, created for the Dutch company Royal VKB, aims to simplify. Its design is so simple, it’s a wonder why it took so long for something like this to appear.

Foolen, born 1982, has a keen interest in materials and technique. As a designer, she seeks to rectify the disparity of beautiful, functional products. A graduate of the Dutch Design Academy Eindhoven, Margriet has quickly risen in the design world. Press coverage from publications as disparate as Dutch Elle, Design Report, Seasons, and Avant Garde attest to the designer’s success in synthesizing fine art, progressive design, and domestic practicality.

An inspired amalgamation of the Moroccan tagine and a Dutch stewing pot, the Slowcooker is hewn of terracotta, as are traditional tagines. A tagine, much like a stewing pot, is designed to nourish and enrich flavors over an extended period. In an ingenious twist, the designer has added a ring of silicon, so the cooker can be placed in conventional ovens to heat, and on wooden surfaces to cool, without worry of damaging the surfaces.

Perfect for cooking meats, steaming vegetables, or conjuring stews, the ergonomic Slowcooker has won awards for its combination of astute design and practical functionality. Recently, Foolen collected the Red Dot Award for product design. The piece’s coup d’etat is brilliantly simple: the top of the pot removed, the bottom half becomes a gently parabolic bowl, sparing dicey transference to a plate and a pile of unnecessary dishes. A handful of Slowcookers can serve individualized meals to a host of guests with style and grace.

A new tool for the seasoned chef or an experimental pick up for the adventurous amateur, the Slowcooker is a diverse, attractive, and practical find.

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William Gish
Gloobbi Design

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