The material of a common household object, the knife, is transformed to give off the design notion of “Martyrdom”. A knife worthy of a Martyr’s humble tastes.
We took 15 photos of objects that showed aging/wear and analyzed these photos for their emotional affects, interpretations and underlying philosophical notions (Concepts). My team and I then selected one of these images for their philosophical notion, “Martyrdom”, as derived from the image of a cracked glass table. We chose ordinary objects that could become martyrs, and to then put these objects through torture to explore material properties. Our prototypes and ourselves had to personally experience martyrdom to truly make this aesthetic / non-aesthetic of Martyrdom (we all started bleeding at some point).
The visible craftsmanship and humbleness of the objects was strong enough to express the suffering of the objects and the torture they went through.
Simone de Waart (Founder of Material Sense)
The final result is a set of 7 knives showing a form of de-evolution from the standard (perfectionism) butter knife, towards the imperfect and handmade craft knife. A scene from Indiana Jones inspired this aesthetic, namely the one where he must choose Jesus’s “Cup of Life”. The incorrect cup was the perfect and bejeweled cup, and instead the one that Indiana Jones chose was a humble and imperfect cup ( Jesus’s cup). Our idea was that the 7 knives and the craftsmen had to both suffer for the grander goal of creating a tool. They both had a shared Martyrdom from ‘tortures’ suffered during the crafting process.
The Martyrs:
Attalan Mailvaganam
Thomas van Lankveld
Rhys Duindam
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