Toys that wait for the child
Hout & Hand makes open-ended wooden toys in Utrecht: stackers, climbing frames, balance boards and the small loose parts children carry around all day.
We started in 2014 with one toy. Sanne Visser taught in a Montessori classroom in Utrecht and could not find a rainbow stacker made from solid wood with a paint she trusted. Her brother Daan, a furniture maker, cut twelve in his shed beside the Vaartsche Rijn. They were gone within a week, mostly to other teachers.
A Montessori classroom asks a lot of a toy. It has to be beautiful enough to sit on an open shelf, simple enough that the child - not the toy - does the work, and strong enough to be used by thirty children a year. We design to that brief still. Every new piece spends a full term in a partner classroom before we sell it, and roughly half of our prototypes never make it out.
Our wood is FSC-certified beech and birch from Germany and the Baltic states. We paint with water-based colours that meet EN 71-3, thinned so the grain shows, and oil with cold-pressed linseed. Every design is independently tested to EN 71-1, -2 and -3. And because good toys are passed on, we keep spare pegs, rings, rungs and balls for every toy in the catalogue.
- First stacker made in Utrecht
- 2014First stacker made in Utrecht
- Radius on every sanded edge
- 3 mmRadius on every sanded edge
- Classroom trial for each new toy
- 1 termClassroom trial for each new toy
A short history
2014
Twelve stackers
Daan cuts the first rainbow stackers for Sanne’s classroom in a shed on the Vaartsche Rijn.
2017
The Pikler triangle
Our first climbing frame, folded flat for Dutch apartments, after a year of classroom trials.
2021
Water-based colour
All paints move to a single water-based range, and we settle on four muted rainbow colours.
2025
Spare parts for life
Every toy in the catalogue gets a stocked parts list. Lost a ring? We send it.
What we hold to
FSC-certified wood
Beech and birch from FSC-certified forests in Germany and the Baltics, traced to the mill.
Water-based paint
Saliva- and sweat-resistant paints to EN 71-3, thinned so the grain shows through.
EN 71 tested
Every design is independently tested to EN 71-1, -2 and -3 before we sell a single one.
What customers say
“The stacker has been a tunnel, a cradle, a bridge for the train and a hat. Two years in and our daughter still finds something new to do with it.”
“We bought the Pikler triangle when our son was nine months old. He climbs it every morning now, and his little sister has started pulling up on the bottom rung.”
“As a childminder I am hard on toys. These are the only ones in the room that still look like they did on the first day.”
One letter a month, about play
A schema to watch for, a toy to make from the recycling, and first word of new pieces from the workshop. Written by Sanne, never more than once a month.