Hasta La Ideas

pA HREF=”http://www.srulirecht.com/index.php/projects/” Sruli Recht/A has a strange sense of humor. We journalists were at a party at the Iceland Design Center when one of the partygoers had a bit too much Brennavin, sat on an unstable table laden with bottles of red wine, and sent the whole thing crashing noisily to the ground. Recht walked in right about that time; spied the huge puddles of red liquid all over the ground; pulled a camera out of his pocket, pressed it into someone’s hands, and hit the deck to pose for a crime-scene photo:/p

p[image courtesy Brian Fichtner]/p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/04/0sruli09.jpg” width=”468″ height=”352″ alt=”0sruli09.jpg”//div

p align=”center”Sruli Wrecked/P

pDuring conversation Recht likes to ride the line between funny and uncomfortable, with a deadpan delivery of transgressive subject matters that sends the jokeometer needle wavering, unable to distinguish sarcasm from earnestness; that sense of humor is also evident in his product designs, some of which are produced in extraordinary circumstances–how many product designers do you know that have smuggled tanned whale penises across the International Date Line? /p

pThe products are better described in Recht’s own words, so we’ll let him do the talking./p

div style=”align: right;”img src=”http://www.core77.com/blog/images/2010/04/0sruli10.jpg” width=”468″ height=”398″ alt=”0sruli10.jpg”//div

p align=”center”Minke Dorks boots/P

blockquoteThe Minke Dorks are a series of coincidences combined. Actually the first night I met Heimir [Sverrisson, film director] we began talking about how Iceland had just announced it would begin whaling again in early- to mid-2006. At the same time I was putting together that shoe collection. The conversation naturally took to “What do they do with all the whale that isn’t eaten…and what can I use that will be thrown out?” I tracked down some hunters and spoke with them about this – what is discarded and what is salvageable. It turns out the only part that is tannable is the foreskin. So I took a box of frozen penises to the north of the country to a leather tanner I had heard could tan anything. And he could. These are the guys I still work with to make the other leather I still use.

pI then had to smuggle the tanned skins into Australia with invoices saying they were just fish skins, so as to take them to the producer that was making my samples. /pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/materials/interview_with_designer_sruli_recht_part_2_a_product_rundown_16317.asp”(more…)/a
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