Kolkman’s first to the door with his great shock of salted gray hair, which hints at both technical genius and artistry — Einstein and Robert Pollard poured liberally into a blue-flannel shirt. His hand, abraded into a coarse melange of callused digits, reaches out to welcome me. I push my lavender-scented palm into his and step through the door, emasculated.

"Coffee?" asks Van den Berg while the dog — Sean Connery — enthusiastically explores my crotch, then my ass, and then back to my crotch with his promiscuous snout. "Sure, black," I say as she smacks the dog and turns away in a well-rehearsed pirouette, flashing copper tresses forged into a loose pile at the base of her neck. The morning sun splinters through a transept of stained glass and strikes what looks like a car bumper in the other room. If this is Peter’s church that I'm standing inside, a place where man prostrates himself before the totems of design, craftsmanship, and family; then Greet, I will learn, is the rock upon which it is built.

Peter Kolkman "Like design and manufacturing is the same process, I think work and life are also the same process."

Miniot as a company is a direct expression of Kolkman's relentless need for creative expression. "I had a graphic design studio where I worked for customers," he reminisces. "But I wanted to make things of my own so I purchased a 3D milling machine and learned to master it in my free time." That was in 2007. "In the process, I thought it would be nice to make a wooden case milled out of one piece of wood for the iPod. I checked the internet and nobody else was making one. So I made prototypes and I went into the woodworking industry to see if it could be produced. It couldn't, nobody could make it. So we decided to do it ourselves."

Seven years later and that single machine has spawned a dozen more, many designed by Kolkman himself. It’s now so busy that the business has taken over the house, forcing Van den Berg, Kolkman, and the kids to take up residence in a smaller building attached at the back — a home Van den Berg and Kolkman largely designed, built, and furnished themselves. "We choose to do it this way and not from some industrial building because it integrates work and life," says Kolkman. "Like design and manufacturing is the same process, I think work and life are also the same process. I have one life and there I make my things. And my kids are around and a part of it all."

Miniot’s not exactly big, not compared to the company in Cupertino whose products it accessorizes. It currently employs just five or six people, depending upon demand, a number Kolkman and Van den Berg have arrived upon by choice as it gives them the ideal ratio of industry responsiveness to product control. "It’s also a good balance of size and fun," says Kolkman, a dynamic that's clear as both kinfolk and employees sit down at the oversized family table for a traditional lunch of hearty breads and smoked fish.

"There are a lot of plastic and rubber cases that are mass produced," says Kolkman, "but it's nice to have a craftsmanship approach." All Miniot products are made of the wood culled from FSC-certified forests: padouk, wenge, oak, walnut, maple, mahogany, and cherry are currently on the menu. "I work with wood because it's warm. It gives a glass and metal device a completely other feel and look. And when it's a year old and full of scratches it's even nicer."

But wood's a challenging material to manipulate within the extreme tolerances of Kolkman’s designs. "I'm not a furniture maker," says Kolkman, "I'm a designer and use solutions that are not normal to the woodworking industry." That means laser-equipped CNC machines driven by the CAD drawings plucked from the man’s imagination. The resulting precision allows magnets to be hidden so deftly inside the impossibly thin recesses of its cases that you'll swear they've somehow magnetized the wood. And one look at the milled volume buttons on a Miniot case is proof of the company's fastidiousness.

The Miniot Process

Peter’s designs start on a computer where they're converted into instructions that drive a handful of CNC milling machines of varying dexterity. Many of the machines have been tweaked to match Miniot’s specialized manufacturing needs.

Each part is inspected for quality and beauty. Henk then sands, cleans, and applies a finish appropriate to each wood's surface. The drying racks and chambers are designed by Peter, like many of the tools used at Miniot.

The pneumatic assembly station for Miniot's iPad cases is, itself, a thing of beauty and skilled engineering. Greet releases and adds suction to assemble the roll-top iPad covers while Judith glues iPhone cases and tucks away the magnets.