The stool project was in itself an exercise in execution to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the material and comfort level with the techniques of woodworking learned in that semester. The objective was to design a stool from a limited amount of wood that was both sturdy enough to sit on and indicative of the designer’s favorite book, which the stool also had to hold or store in some way.

At first I had no particular favorite book so I went off in search of a suitable subject to serve as my inspiration for this project. I found Clement Clark Moore’s pop up version of The Night Before Christmas in a little second hand bookstore and decided this would be my inspiration.

After spending some time reading and re reading the story and appreciating all the different popup elements, I decided my stool should be a twist on traditional, because so was the book. The poem in the book has been told over and over in just the same way for generations and there is something comforting in the traditional. I set about designing this piece by going back to the schema of a stool; two legs and a seat. From there I added elements to challenge this traditional thought and make it more visually appealing and interesting just as the pop ups in the book serve to make the traditional story more interactive and interesting. Finally I came up with an asymmetrical design for the stool that displayed my book at a playful angle.

For this project we were challenged to design a pair of salad tongs that would encourage the user to cherish and keep them for a long period of time. Before staring this project we reflected on the fact that lots of products are built with materials that will outlive the life of the product. For example a plastic pen may run out in a matter of months but the pen itself, the plastic, will litter our landfills for the next thousands of years. By paying special attention to the quality of finishing and the comfort of use we can design so that a product’s life is extended. Carefully designed objects are kept and used for a very long time by their owners ultimately creating less waste to fill up landfills because people will not have to replace those products as often.

In my design process for this project I took a long time examining different grips and objects to hold to gain a better understanding of what makes an object comfortable to hold and use. Once I had a better understanding of what made objects comfortable to hold and which shapes fit easily into the hand I started experimenting with different grips, paying special attention to the transition between the human interaction part (or handles) and the business end (the actual salad scoops). Coming up with a smooth transition was key to making the tongs look aesthetically pleasing and for me to better understand the difference between the action and the interaction aspect that in some way is present in every simple tool.

The Salad Tong project was my first opportunity to really craft something made from a single piece of wood. It was exciting to see the gradual transition of a rough block of pine to two gracefully finished kitchen tools. After multiple sketch models from blue modeling foam, I crafted these salad tongs each out to a single piece of pine. Cutting out the rough shape of this object on the band saw and then using both the three different kinds of machine sanders in shop to shape the tongs. Finally these were finished with hours of meticulous sanding.