Karl Zahn, Materials Whisperer

by Nat Tingley

‘Do what makes you happy. If making things makes you happy, then you need to make things. Then make more. And keep making. Stay happy.’

Like so many product designers, Karl Zahn is on a mission. Unlike so many product designers, Zahn’s mission hasn’t the ultimate objective of global recognition, going to costume parties with the elite, or having his products sell out on websites like Gilt Groupe. Yet despite his best efforts, Zahn can–begrudgingly–check those things off his growing list of accomplishments.

Zahn, a native of ‘much better than New Hampshire’ state of Vermont, learned at a fairly young age that making things was something that he wanted to do. “I knew I wanted to make things from a very early age. I remember being 6 or so and making a working model of a light switch out of paper. Granted, it didn’t actually work, but the parts swiveled on a toothpick. I remember how impressed my dad was when I showed it to him. I imagine that feeling is why I keep making things. I love pushing my own abilities…there is just something in my brain that needs to know how things work, go together and are made.”

If you were to ever meet Karl Zahn, either in passing or in his Greenpoint shop, what’s just been recounted would all of the sudden make a lot of sense. When presented with a thing, be it a baseball glove or a newfangled tupperware container, Karl analyzes it. He picks it up, touches it, runs his hands along it’s shape, opens it, manipulates it, brings it close to his face to catch the object’s minute details and then swiftly pulls it away to take in its context within its space. He literally cannot look at anything without figuring out how it works. It’s fascinating and even a little unnerving, especially when that thing he’s pouring over is something of yours.

Still, unyielding scrutiny and a biological desire to build things alone do not a happy artist make, and the gap between form and function becomes frustratingly cavernous. Spanning that distance, or at least giving it a shot, is a challenge Zahn meets head on, using his tools, technique, trade, and training to get the job done.

Materials wranglin’ is one of Zahn’s more powerful strengths. Each material acts differently than the next and can even vary between batches. Intimate knowledge of how a component might react to outside manipulation is paramount and means the difference between something crudely fashioned or, well, something like these Karl Zahn Design Animal Boxes (pictured below). For Zahn, a designer who uses more materials than Portland has coffee shops, the importance and the relative difficulty of this virtue rise steeply.

While this can surely halt the design process and could spell out certain death to projects undertaken by less capable hands, Zahn is able to calm a bucking and kicking material simply by talking with it. Introducing Karl Zahn: Materials Whisperer.

‘When I’m in the wood shop, I’m imparting my will onto a material that has its own story to tell. There is a back and forth; a dialogue with materials that people who don’t work with their hands just don’t understand.

Its like having a conversation with someone. Sometimes the person is wonderful and you end up drunk at 3am because the time just flew by. Other times it seems like work, and you are fighting to keep a conversation going.

Like people, there are materials that are more difficult and put up more of a fight. Then there are others that are a sheer pleasure to be around.

I think every craftsman finds their material over time. They’ll settle into something for a long period because the conversation is that good. Later on, they’ll re-discover another material when they learn how to talk to it.’

Considering Zahn’s dynamic portfolio made up of (but not limited to) toys, lights, packing tape, mirrors, tables, cord organizers, and bike handlebars, and taking into account the number of vendors selling his wares, the best way to describe Zahn’s work is ‘all over the place’. He’ll readily admit that his interests, interests that are as varied as they are abundant, will pull him into many different directions. One could even say that Zahn has a sort of design wanderlust that disallows him from conceptually staying in one place for too long. One day it’s wood, the next it’s brass, and after that it’s back to wood, all the while utilizing the older techniques and technology that he feels haven’t been used to their full potential.

Zahn’s ever-changing foci is, no doubt, looked down upon –or at least questioned– by some of the other product designers with which he competes. Some may say this jack-of-all-trades thing he’s got going on isn’t serious design and would suggest that he direct his energy towards a singular design element. Wrong. By virtue of Karl Zahn’s metamorphose product development, he has created a brand and a line of products that delivers superlative design to consumers’ wide array of partialities.

Also, it’s more fun this way.

So what can we look forward to KZD delivering unto the art hungry masses in the coming months?

‘I have a pen coming out in January that is targeted at the medical profession. The bezel is made of solid unfinished brass which maintains the brass’s innate ability to be antimicrobial. In essence, every time your doctor writes a prescription, the pen will be sterile and will help slightly to keep his or her hands clean. I’m pretty excited to see it finally completed and find its way out into the world.’

It’s actually kind of annoying how smart that is.

Karl Zahn’s mission is to design and have a blast doing it. If he’s not pushing himself to refine a carving technique or teaching himself how to temper and harden tool steel with a torch, he’s not happy. If he’s not prototyping or building, he’s not happy. Zahn will even take total failure over the complacent alternative of somnolency. To Zahn, ‘inactive’ is a dirty word and if it’s not fun, he ain’t doin’ it. Which is good for those of us who like design lightly tossed with character instead of deep fried in someone’s ego.