MY MOTIVATION

I spend most of my working life behind screens. As a videographer and editor here in Berlin, my days are fast: deadlines, notifications, a timeline that always needs one more cut. I love that work, but somewhere along the way I noticed that my hands were only ever touching keyboards, and my head never really switched off.

Painting changed that. The first time I sat down with a plain plaster figure, a brush, and no plan at all, something unfamiliar happened: time got slow. There was no right or wrong, no one to impress, nothing to optimize. Just color, texture, and quiet. Two hours passed and my head was still.

pulpo grew out of that feeling. I want to make it easy for other people to find it too, whether that's alone at your kitchen table, on a blanket in the park with friends, or on a slow evening for two. That's why every figure is cast by hand, and why there are no rules included in the box.

We live in a world that constantly asks us to be faster. pulpo is my small invitation to do the opposite: create, slow down, connect.

Tô TUOng — where pulpo comes from

In Vietnam, painting figures isn't something you do in an art class. It happens on the sidewalk.

The tradition is called tô tượng, literally "painting a statue." On warm evenings, you'll find little stalls in parks and night markets across the country: rows of plain white plaster figures, pots of bright paint, and people of all ages sitting side by side on tiny plastic stools, brushes in hand. Kids paint next to their grandparents. Couples paint on dates. Nobody is trying to make a masterpiece and that's exactly the point.

Behind the simple pleasure sits real craft. Each figure is cast by hand: plaster is mixed, poured into molds, and carefully worked so it reaches every small detail. It takes patience to make something that exists just to be painted over.

I fell in love with both sides of it, the quiet skill of the making, and the easy, open way people share it. pulpo is our way of bringing tô tượng to Berlin: hand-cast figures and the invitation to sit down, slow down, and make something with the people around you.