Hasta La Ideas

Which do you think is trickier: Dreaming up a form for an entirely new sort of object, or re-imagining an established form factor? Industrial designer Stian Korntved Ruud recently undertook a massive project falling into the latter category. Oslo-based Ruud has become consumed with “making objects with pure functional or aesthetic features,” and decided he would spend a year designing and making new spoons.

The thing is, he decided he’d design and make a new spoon every day, until he’d created 365 designs. Hence the project’s title, Daily Spoon.

By repeating the production of a spoon every day for a longer period of time (365 days), the goal is to challenge and explore a spoon’s aesthetic and functional qualities.

I make all the spoons in a traditional way with only hand tools. The point of this is to actively cooperate with the material, in this case wood.

In a modern industrial production the machines overwrites the wooden structures and natural growth pattern. When using manual hand tools my hand collaborates with the wood structure during the forming process. This underpins all the spoons unique qualities.

Ruud began the project in March of 2014, so assuming he’s kept pace, the project should be wrapped (though he’s made no mention of stopping).

You can see the astonishing diversity of designs Ruud’s produced on his Instagram.

Here’s to hoping Ruud continues, and/or switches over to forks and knives.