the craft of modern design
HANDFUL OF SALT No 2
Issue No 2 US 22 EUR 18 UK 16
WELCOME The good life. Living it up. Living on the edge. Living to the fullest. Oh hell, living. Yet, say the words design or craft and suddenly things become so serious. And that makes sense: the people we celebrate are obsessed with quality, with integrity, with the focus that leads to creating exceptional objects and experiences. But we think that you can have your cake and eat it too. Outrageous quality. Outrageous refinement. Outrageous fun. So we're dedicating this to these makers and partakers who believe that craft and design can be one hell of a good time, who play and experiment and push all kinds of envelopes. St. George Spirits and their parties in a bottle. Emily Johnson and her willingness to scare the hell out of people while remaking the British bone china industry. Joe Luttwak whose supplies of fiber composites for his iconic guitars were threatened by no less than the Boeing Dreamliner. Here’s to taking those chances and dreaming those dreams.
Live large.
CONTRIBUTORS Regina Connell Editor in Chief
Nicole Bemboom Creative Director / Designer
Chloe Dalby Emma Louise Rodriguez Matt McDonald Laure Joliet Meghan Urback Anne Stericker
N U M B E R
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Noticed 7 Zana Bayne 12 Chainmaille
Spaces 16 KillSpencer
Inspired 22
David Bowie
Places We Love 28 The Mill 40 Mojo Bicycle Cafe 48 Vinyl
Features 54 Blackbird 64 Dandelion 72 Walking in La 76 Janice Arnold 80 St. George 88 1882
Chainmaille
Evolution of a trend:
Noticed
3rd C BCE
Chainmaille invented by the Celts, used as armor as they marauded throughout Europe and harassed the Romans. Unfortunately the Romans adopted the Celts’ chainmaille, and defeated and subjugated them.
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The Middle Ages
Chainmaille was used around Europe up until the 14th century. Due to the time-consuming and labor intensive process, these expensive shirts were a symbol of rank for medieval knights.
Late 18th C
Chainmaille made the jump into fashion and daily life as thought romantically centered around an idealized vision of Medieval life. It became ever more popular due to a resurgence of the focus on the handmade as an alternative to the growing negative impacts of the Industrial Revolution.
Noticed
19th C
Armies from the Middle East to India and Central Asia used mail to protect themselves. Victorian ladies carried fine mesh bags made out of chainmaille. The maids of those same ladies used a variant of chainmaille to scrub pots.
WWI
Chainmaille returned to the front lines as a breathable and not entirely vision blocking guard against shrapnel.
1920s
After the wartime demand for chainmaille waned, it returned to women’s accessories, as a favorite of the flappers.
1948
Ingrid Bergman starred as Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc.
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Inspired
MODERN LOVE. David Bowie takes the crashing and clashing universe of influences and refracts it all back out in a rainbow of influential, prismatic arrangements never before imagined. David Bowie is... let’s leave that question to the experts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and explore some of the effects of that cosmic impact of the Man Who Fell To Earth. Nicole Bemboom.
Lone Mine, Geometric Pendants: Ziggy Stardust 24
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INSPIRED John Ford, SD: Low
The Mill It’s simple. Coffee + Toast. Pared down wood + white tiles.
It’s minimal: just enough and nothing to waste. It’s exactly what you want, and it’s all done perfectly, from the flour milled onsite by Josey Baker Bread for your rich rye toast with just enough cream cheese to the mugs of Four Barrell Coffee. The gorgeously open space, by Boor Bridges Architecture, is welcoming and relaxed, with faceted lamps by Brian Schmitt reinforcing the warmly cool atmosphere. The local love doesn’t stop there: The Mill carries lots of our favorite artisians, like honey from Lover’s Lane Farm and a spot-on selection from GDS Cloth Goods in Oakland.
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Blackbird Guitars
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Take the guitar, the acoustic kind. It’s the ubiquitous, essential instrument beloved by professionals and amateurs alike. It sounds great. It’s approachable. It’s pretty proletarian. And it’s the perfect mobile instrument, ideal for on-the-go and spur-ofthe-moment performances. Ask most people if they play the guitar, and they’ll respond, “Nah... well... I play a little,” followed by a tentative (or perhaps not so tentative) rendition of Stairway to Heaven. (OK, maybe there’s a downside to all this.) However ubiquitous it is, though, the guitar is a delicate balance between design and material. The mass, factory-built guitars may be fine for plucking out a few Jimmy Page riffs after a few too many beers, but there’s a growing world of people who want something a little more considered. And may be when they begin to learn about the world of luthiery. The luthier is something like a mechanic/physicist with a musical streak. Guitar luthiery typically involves three aspects: sound aesthetics, playability, and visual aesthetics. All three aspects are carved, inlaid, shaped, and turned into the instrument by the luthier. The sound features of a guitar are governed by the shaping of the wood and the effect of the wood’s relative density on the resonance and vibrational qualities of the instrument. In a quality instrument, the sound has a variety of characters like tonal depth, projection, richness, and clarity. Playability involves the formal length and heights of the guitar parts like the frets, neck, and string height. These all come together to produce an instrument that is, with any luck, easy to play or at least designed around a player’s certain style. Visual aesthetics are often something of an afterthought. It’s almost codified, and governed by conventional taste. And it simply can’t interfere with the instrument’s sound quality or playability.
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The 17th and 18th centuries were considered the first golden age of acoustics and instrument making, and many of the innovations in luthiery from that time endure to this day. (The basis of most modern classical guitar designs was created in the mid-19th century by Spanish luthier Antonio Torres Jurada.) However, with all due respect to Torres, guitar luthiery has entered a new golden age, and it even involves composites and carbon fiber. And this time, one of the hot spots for design and making is San Francisco, California. Its leader is Joe Luttwak of Blackbird Guitars and he’s breaking with tradition and changing guitars as you know them. There are people who will say that only old growth wood can produce the mellowness and resonance that are the hallmarks of a great guitar, but, frankly, they’d be wrong. Because Joe and his team at Blackbird produce instruments that not only have the resonance, tonal variety, and easy playability as any top-notch wooden acoustic guitar, but also blows away the aesthetic competition. Sleek and sexy black carbon fiber construction, custom-painted red interior peeking out from its unconventionally placed sound holes… it is one sexy beast of a guitar, as much a work of art as of function. And it’s light (among the lightest in the world), humidity-resistant and virtually indestructible. (These last aspects lit up the eyes of a friend who manages bands and who frequently has to deal with guitars that have mysteriously found their way into swimming pools.) Blackbird is housed in a three-story building in San Francisco’s Mission District that was originally a printing studio. Those looking for some romantic notion of a instrument-making workshop will be disappointed. Because this is high tech R&D, computer-aided design, and smart, small-scale, highskilled (and high-craft) manufacturing. We’re informed that
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we’ve caught them on a rather quiet day: usually, the noise of industrial machines puts a crimp in conversation. In the capacious studio, one of the Blackbird team (who formerly worked with an aerospace company designing composites) experiments up with new super-secret composites, playing with layering materials to make them multidirectionally strong but lightweight. Then, there’s an area for mold making. Molds go from being hand sculpted in foam, modeled in CAD, then re-sculpted in foam using a CNC router. When it’s finally right, it becomes an aluminum mold. Once that’s complete, the carbon fiber is hand layered into the mold. Another, more intimate room, is closer to a traditional luthiery, where a team painstakingly finishes pieces into guitars the industry raves about. The influence of your design background in your guitars is really clear. But industrial designers can focus on pretty much anything. Why guitars? I picked up the guitar at sixteen and started playing in bands. (He hails from the Washington, DC area.) I’ve always enjoyed it but it was never going to be my career. The Company started from an ongoing personal project to make
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1882. Places become indelibly linked to their traditional crafts, and vice versa. So when places steeped in history fall on hard times, it seems impossible that they won’t somehow pull through as they have all these years. But what happens if they don’t? This is the question in the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England, or “the Potteries” as the area is more commonly known. The production of clayware reaches back at least to the 17th century, and the Potteries were particularly rich in clay, salt, lead, and coal, and more recently the ingredients for fine bone china. Pottery is, literally, in the very soil. Despite that, much of the industry has declined in the past few decades, and the iconic bottle kilns stand smokeless. Is it all over for the Potteries? Not if Emily Johnson, and a similarly-minded band of entrepreneurial types (like Emma Bridgewater) have their way. They’re seeking not only to help their traditional craft endure, but also to coax it into taking fresh, new, and exciting forms. Let’s go back a bit: in 1882, the Johnson family tradition of creating clayware was established with the opening of Johnson
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