The Craftsman: Issue n.008 — May 2018
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This issue features two craftsmen that have embraced the best of traditional practices and modern technology (lots of 3D body scanning involved) to create products that fit and serve you better. You can now also follow The Craftsman Newsletter on Instagram, where you’ll find more photos from each issue and updates from previous ones. I’m still experimenting with the number and the length of features included in each email. Do you prefer many short stories or fewer longer ones (like in the current one)? Send me your feedback and comments via email or on Twitter. Here’s the archive of past issues. I hope you enjoy it.
“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it:
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”.
William Morris
Creating Ultra-Personalised Shoes Combining Shoe Data with Life Data
An old shoe-dog saying goes something like “the shoes you wear in your 20s and 30s are what will hurt your back in your 70s and 80s”. Troy Nachtigall, a Fashion Designer dedicated to Wearable Technology and a Marie Curie Researcher at the Technical University of Eindhoven, wants to scientifically prove that correlation, that if you keep walking in a certain shoe with a particular style, in 40 years you won’t be able to walk at all. And to use a data-centric approach to fix this.
We tend to treat our feet very badly and this has a big impact on our body. Troy’s goal is to combine shoe data with life data (your age, the health of your feet and how you use them, etc) to create ultra personalised products and services that are a step beyond mass customisation, where you can customise individual things for individual people.
Nachtigall runs a digital craftsmanship class that scaffolds together traditional crafting and modern technology, creating a new archetype of designer. You really have to grasp the craftsmanship aspect, the material understanding that comes through the meditation of making, and then you need to learn how to work with machines digitally. Often it’s about being one with the machine, putting your hands inside the 3D printer while it’s printing and move things around, adding to the traditional toolkit that a craftsman would typically use. Another important aspect is that the course guides the students to make product-service systems, taking a more holistic view of the thing and the communication of the thing at the same time. For example, students have to design not only the shoe but also the website to present it.
“We see digital craftsmanship as this experiment in possibility on how do we not only understand the craft but also understand the technology and treat technology as a material in itself.”
Read more about Troy Nachtigall’s work in this longer piece I published here.
Cubitts Handmade Spectacles, London
Tom Broughton started Cubitts almost 5 years ago for no other reason than his willingness to nerd-out all day designing beautiful spectacles. He is enamoured of London’s King’s Cross area: he named Cubitts after the street where he resides, each eyewear model takes the name of a local street, and the brand’s logo features the letters K and X, a common abbreviation for King’s Cross. Cubitts stands out for handcrafting ready to wear and bespoke spectacles, offering about 200 different combinations of styles, colours and materials. Broughton and his young multi-cultural team are bringing a fresh breathe of air to eyewear, which used to be a cornerstone of British craftsmanship. He is not obsessed by growth and sees the market as big enough — and expanding — not to need to rush things: “We want to do good work and achieve the right scale at the right pace”.
What I was totally not expecting when I met Tom was to end up talking about machine learning and cephalometrics (the measurements of your head, from kephalē, “head” in ancient Greek and “metrics”… well, just that). He explained that much like your feet, your face’s measurements don’t change as you age, except maybe for your ears dropping a bit, your nose growing or wrinkles showing up around your eyes. So at Cubitts they use a 3D scanner and computer-aided design (CAD) to create a precise mapping of your face and head, that will be later fed to a computer numerical control (CNC) machine to manufacture bespoke spectacles that will fit you like a [face]glove. Think of these 3D maps as the wood shoe forms that Ferragamo would do for famous clients. Machine Learning, a form of Artificial Intelligence, comes into play to find patterns in what customers’ faces look like and the kind of spectacles they buy. This data can be later used either in-store or online for recommending the most appropriate spectacles for you.
Cubitts represents modern craftsmanship in action. They love applying traditional techniques but don’t feel limited by the same tools that were in use 200 years ago. They will use old tools where it makes sense, like with their 70 years old bridge bumper and combine it with cutting edge technology where it allows them to make things better, like with the aforementioned CNC machine. This gives Cubitts amazing flexibility to the point of being able to make one-offs that cost almost the same as ready to wear spectacles. When I visited, they were making a limited short run of six units inspired by those that Marcello Mastroianni wore in La Dolce Vita. A CNC machine was finishing cutting a frame while two employees were hand-sanding the temples.
On the importance of details, their shop and HQ on 97 Caledonian Road features recovered furniture that is also related to the British heritage in eyeglasses, like the antique optician cabinet pictured behind him in the photo above, which was once used by the well-known British optical firm Raphaels to hold frames and lenses.
97 Caledonian Road London, N1 9BT, United Kingdom
cephalometrics.co.uk
cubitts.co.uk
London Craft Week 2018
The 4th edition of London Craft Week will take place on 9–13 May 2018. It’s a great opportunity to appreciate exceptional British and international craftsmanship at open studios, galleries, museums, shops and getting your hands dirty during workshops. This same week the British Crafts Council will be running their Reel to Reel Craft Film Festival. Check out Wallpaper’s highlights for the week here.
From London Craft’s Week website:
Authenticity is at the heart of London Craft Week and the programme aims to attract a broad audience united in their appreciation of imagination, individuality, passion and skill. A curated programme of events across London allows visitors to create their own itinerary, meet the makers and gain access to exclusive exhibitions, demonstrations and workshops.
“London Craft Week is a response to a renaissance in the appreciation of creativity and craft; to the role of hand, head, unique skills and true talent. It is another example of what, at its best, the world’s creative capital does so well — mixing glamour with cutting edge; heritage and contemporary and the commercial with the cultural.” — Guy Salter, OBE MVO, Chairman of London Craft Week
Wabi-sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, Leonard Koren
This little book from 1994 and it’s companion from 2015 were a revelation into what I though was an ancient concept and series of aesthetic principles. Instead, wabi-sabi as we know it today is a term that has been coined rather recently, though it’s rooted in centuries-old pillars.
As the author points out, wabi-sabi is difficult to reduce to a handful of principles or formulas without betraying its essence. This is more so exacerbated by the belief of many that wabi-sabi must be kept mysterious and incomplete to be true to itself.
Originally, these now conjoined words had very different meanings, with “Wabi” used to represent the misery of living alone in nature, away from society, and suggested a discouraged, dispirited, cheerless emotional state, and “Sabi” meaning “chill”, “lean”, or “withered”.
By writing the first book, the author’s intention was to try to preserve what was seen as a disappearing concept by telling its origins, anchored in the tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism, and its relationship with different dimensions, from the metaphysical to the spiritual, from moral precepts to material qualities.
This short passage on the metaphysical basis of wabi-sabi stroke me as both beautiful and a good approximation to one of its key dimensions:
“Things are either devolving towards, or evolving from, nothingness. As dusk approaches in the hinterlands, a traveler ponders shelter for the night. He notices tall rushes growing everywhere, so he bundles an armful together as they stand in the field, and knots them at the top. Presto, a living grass hut. The next morning, before embarking on another day’s journey, he unknots the rushes and presto, the hut de-constructs, disappears, and becomes a virtually indistinguishable part of the larger field of rushes once again. The original wilderness seems to be restored, but minute traces of the shelter remain. A slight twist or bend in a reed here and there. There is also the memory of the hut in the mind of the traveler — and in the mind of the reader reading this description. Wabi-sabi, in its purest, most idealized form, is precisely about these delicate traces, this faint evidence, at the borders of nothingness”.
The second volume aims to clarify how wabi-sabi came to be and discusses its place in the contemporary world. Of particular relevance for me was the assertion that wabi-sabi is the antithesis of “the digital” and thus can not exist in a digital form.
You can find the books on Amazon or at your favourite bookshop:
Wabi-sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (US / UK)
Wabi-Sabi — Further Thoughts (US / UK)
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