Just over a year ago, I wrote a post on the subject of primeval style and the new Dark Ages. The design world seems to have picked up on this trend. For those wishing to kit out a cave, or adopt a primordial lifestyle, product designers have come up with some inventive solutions:
Lighting:
Kitty Benaim, who describes herself as a ‘contemporary rawhide artist’, has created a fabulously furry animal skin chandelier.
Heating:
Alexandra Mazur-Knyazeva’s bio fireplace, Essence of Flame, consists of portable ceramic fire rings made from a high-refractory clay that can withstand continuous heating and cooling.
Power tools:
Camilla Barnard’s wooden tools use locally sourced materials such as London plane, walnut and mahogany.
Furniture and tableware:
Hungarian design team, Ivanka, is the inspiration behind a collection of concrete home accessories. Ivanka’s versatile home furnishings include a desk that doubles up as a library (and perhaps as a dining table too). There’s also hard-wearing concrete tableware and an… er, sausage-shaped container, that may come in handy for keeping sausages cool in the event of an unanticipated solar flare.
Clothing and accessories:
In conjunction with two young Hungarian fashion designers, Ivanka has also designed a utilitarian grey range of concrete clothing and clutch bags…
Writing materials:
Ariane Prin uses waste products as the raw material to create her curious looking pencils, which she hopes will eventually be supplied to all students. The lead substitute, which writes rather like charcoal, and is equally crumbly, may well send pupils back into the Dark Ages.
Dabblers are invited to submit their own primeval designs for consideration.
I am pleased to see that we will still have electricity (to operate the drill) even after we run out of metal. Yet I wish that the designer had indicated how the electricity will be transmitted–to judge from the effect of lightning on trees, wood is not an efficient conductor.
And a lead substitute? “Lead” pencils have been made with graphite since the memory of [this] man runneth not to the contrary. Graphite is all or nearly all carbon, by the way.
The architect Witold Rybczinski writes of a colleague who wished to build housing out of materials made of sulfur compounds. The man meant this in all seriousness (trying to be, shall we say, “modern” rather than “post-modern”). This did not work out, as anybody who has dealt with sulfur might guess.
Finally, I think that the Hungarians might credit the US Mafia, which explored the possibilities of concrete clothing–footwear, mostly–long before they were born.
Ah, yes, graphite! You can see full details of Ariane’s pencil design process here.
The drill and all of the other tools on display are purely sculptural. The only function they have is to trick people into thinking they are real.
Thanks for your enlightened comments on these curiously retro-progressive designs, George. In view of the high likelihood of another great depression, it’s probably not such a good idea to mention concrete shoes…
a concrete ipad casing would be quite cool for techy fans of brutalist architecture
It cracks me up. Surely there’s an award, like the literary bad sex award, or the ig nobel prize, for the field of design? If not, why not?
If it’s for want of a name how about the Dyson Prize?
I did consider including ‘musique concrete’ in The Art of Noise a couple of weeks ago on Lazy Sunday, but try as I may, I couldn’t bring myself to inflict the dreadful samples onto anybody – I listened so you didn’t have to.
Most, it seems to me, is thin gruel, and what unfailingly raises a smile on my visage is the encomia that is usually trotted out to support the din, confirming that the exponents of this questionable ‘art’ are rarely sure of their ground, and are often seeking praise when none is offered. Such praise, if it ever turns up, is worth about 10 cents on the dollar.
We’ve just gone all primeval and brought into the house an entire, real, actual tree. Smells wonderful. We bought it this morning on a local street from our usual London-Albanian Christmas tree dealer. Since we saw him last year he’s become a father – his boy Nasri is named after the Arsenal player. Despite describing himself as Muslim he says they’ll all be exchanging Christmas presents. Funny old world innit?
That’s a curiously creative idea, Worm – though unfortunately, the Dyson Prize is for designs that ‘solve a problem’, Ian…
And what a wonderfully Dabbleresque array of comments today – from Witold Rybczinski’s colleague’s sulphur housing concept and Mahlerman’s musique concrete to Gaw’s Albanian Christmas tree dealer – fabulous!
Funny old world, yes. The Dyson Award for solving problems? The irony.
Curiously Ian, the ferro concrete-Hungy-desk-library is not dissimilar to JDs workspace at Kirk Dyson in Corsham, his first job, inventing the wheelbarrow ball-wheel in polyethylene, it was pointed out that, perhaps, it’s squareness may not be conducive to forward motion. As we know, from there he went downhill, making vacuum cleaners that pretended to suck, they did, suck that is.
The post Susan, very apt in these cash strapped days of austerity, Laura Ashley have denied rumours that next years curtain range are manufactured from tie-dyed used Lib Dems.