Folk’s Design

Design, I love this Book, people, sustainable, tools

It’s alla about the people adaptation and inspiration to the materials they have: Vladimir Archipo, a young russian, collected since many years a lot of tools made of re-used material. The Wall was down, the Communism was falling, but people still needed the tools for their daily lives. Vladimir Archipo collected thounsands of tools and handmade objects just for their beauty. He collected them and also he recorded the story behind every object, realizing a wonderful book called Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts .

There’s also a web arsenal of all this artifacts, just in russian, but you can just surf it for pleaseure and beauty.

Here some examples taken from the Kevin Kelly’s blog:

Television aerial Aleksandr Tarasov, Ramenskoye, Moscow region, 1980. Made from table lamp base, textolite, a conductor, screws.
This is a television aerial, for the 33rd channel, which in the period between 1978 and 1980 was transmitted in Leningrad. There weren’t any antennas for sale and the magazine Radio published some different plans for making them. Basically this antenna was made using a sketch from this magazine. Instead of cutting it out of a sheet of metal I took a piece of fibreglass laminate, which is plastic with foil on one side. And the tracks were cut out from foil according to the sizes published in Radio. As for the base, I used a base from a table lamp - it was necessary to fix it on with something. There’s nothing miraculous about this construction, I was more amazed that Arkhipov saw something in it. I consider it to be a very simple thing, made for a purpose between other jobs. The signal from the antenna is received through this cable and then sent to the TV. The cable has to correspond with the elements of the antenna in order to effectively transmit the signal coming from the antenna. Apart from that, this cable has to go around the antenna in a certain way so that the wave resistance in the current of the cable connecting the antenna matches the ‘line’. Well, here you need to use your wits. How can you lay this cable around the antenna? Around the edges some openings were drilled and thread was put into them and then with the method they use in radio electronic equipment it was tied on. They bind sausages up like that. And because of this it reminds some people of plaits, or a sausage.

Badminton Shuttlecock. Made from Plastic bottle, cloth, elastic band– Gennadii Konychev, Ryazan region, 2000
I took a plastic bottle and cut out something looking more or less like a shuttlecock. These stabilisers are supposed to be the feathers. And to soften the impact I covered the end with soft pieces of material and an elastic band.

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Luca @ July 12, 2007