Hand Werk Pound Shop

Silence here for a couple of weeks. A busy period of making for Kids.Modern and for Poundshop (opening tomorrow), a pop-up-experimental-shop curated by Household and Sara Melin. The shop space on Hoxton Street looks great, designed by architect Finn Williams and product designer Fredrik Paulsen. My contribution is an edition of 50 Hand Werk boxes, each containing a set of materials and forms, for abstract play.



Wood, plastic, ceramic, rubber, fabric. The components, mostly designed and cut to combine with counterparts sourced from school science lab suppliers for example, have a character that sits somewhere between board game bits, measurement tools, ambiguous accessories for clothing, for eating.



They sit and stack in a way which remembers systems seen for storing wooden flutes in the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, Scrabble letter lips, cutlery trays, test tube racks.



The sets each imply activity but there are no rules or guidelines supplied. Hand Werk is simply about sensibility brought about by mute play, by handling. No rules because the elements should be moved and moved again.



Boxed as seen here. The interior subdivisions point to an archival method. This process is as much for my own need for clarity and foothold in understanding form and intercompatible materials, to take then into a larger scale. The incremental marks help the pieces to speak to one another. The black marks are inlaid, beginning a technique I would like to take back into furniture as a way of taking the design off upholstery and onto the wooden framework.

A set of silkscreened and overlocked mats, each with a sequential route.





And sheets that sit inside the box lid, as a placeholder for instructions.



These snaps gives an idea of the edition, with variance across the box contents. They were taken after a 'nuit blanche' of Saturday into Sunday, to finish for delivery. Impossible without the gritty, skilled help of Hannah Whitfield, Penelope Klein, Sally (of course) and my (irreplaceable) Dad.







Household's flyer.