alexc1ted asked: whats your favorite material to work with?
I’m not sure I think about it that way. I love to use a material to the best of its potential. I love the process of understanding what a material’s quirks are and designing a finished product that identifies and highlights them. I grew up working with wood a lot, and I’ve always been really awed by the way a master carpenter can emphasize the character of a piece of wood that was formed over decades by light and water. Steel is so different - it’s a material that has revolutionized the way that humans interact with their surroundings, and it has spawned an incredibly rich period of innovation and creativity in the last two centuries or so. Being able to be a part of that tradition is very satisfying to me. Recently I’ve been doing more work in copper, bronze and leather - all materials that have been in widespread use for millennia. It’s been really fun, and it has allowed me to do things that are very difficult with steel. On the other end of the spectrum there’s stainless steel and titanium, which are generally difficult to work with and which produce objects that have completely different design considerations. Aluminum is also very interesting. It gets a bad name in the bike market but it’s a fascinating material that I use all the time for tools, fixtures and other small parts.
That’s the part about my job that I enjoy the most - learning about how best to utilize or address a material, idea or process. I think that if I needed to eliminate all but one material from my arsenal, I’d find the process considerably less satisfying.
