Etagere & Bowls – Container Collection #crafts #industrial #sustainable

Metal spinning, when perfected, often makes the final product impossible to differentiate from mass-produced deep-drawn items. At an intermediate stage, clear hand-made signs appear, such as repeated grooves on the surface. On the other hand the bowl’s edge folds up from hurried shaping in production and the appearance varies within each object. Wrinkles also occur in the automated deep drawing process if the sheet metal to be drawn is not held down firmly enough. The production marks reveal a difference between the spun and deep-drawn parts, which would be impossible to differentiate if everything had gone smoothly.

An experienced metal spinning craftsman once told me that a metal spun part with such folds is considered as reject and ends up in the companys container. It is a process-related problem: the industrial process is a linear one in all its facets. All that counts is the initial plan and the comparison with the end result from the machine. If expectations are not fulfilled, the part ends up in the container. 
The Etagere and the bowls are just one conceptual output as an ode to imperfection and to a different way of dealing with the meaning of failure within standardized industrial production processes.

Here, craftsmanship attempts to imitate the results of industrial production and achieve the same qualities. The “Container Collection” is one part of the project “Industrial Phenomena” that examines how the industrial production system might has shaped our ways of thinking and judging through paradigms found in everyday phenomena like objects and narratives.