London designer Simon Hasan has hand-made 400 bowls, cups and vases from boiled leather, which he will sell via a vending machine.

Called Industrial Makeshifts, the project involved wrapping pieces of leather over mass-produced objects, including cola bottles and thrift-store finds, and immersing them in boiling water.

The customised vending machine will be installed in the market square of UK town Northampton on 23-24 July, 30-31 July and 1 August as part of local festival Blink.

Each item will cost £3.

Photography is by Emma Wieslander. Illustration and graphic design is by Xavier Poultney.

Here's some more information from Hasan:

SIMON HASAN - INDUSTRIAL MAKESHIFT
Northampton Market Square
July 2010

MASS-PRODUCED HAND-CRAFTED ONE-OFFS
£3 WHILST STOCKS LAST

Industrial Makeshift was conceived in response to an invitation by Northampton Festival to create a site-specific installation in the town’s 700 year-old Market Square.

Like many market towns, Northampton has witnessed the explosive growth of high street chains that are part of an automated system of global manufacturing, supply and consumption.

In Industrial Makeshift Simon Hasan explores this evolution through themes of commerce, craft and industry, and by questioning the role of the handmade within the modern production system.

Hasan has used the medieval leather-working technique of Cuir Bouilli to mass-produce over 400 handcrafted objects, which can be purchased in the usual coin-operated way from a customised vending machine. Selling for only £3, the pieces are moulded on archetypes of mass-production such as cola bottles or anonymous pound-shop plastic objects. Rendered in hardened leather, these symbols of globalised industry become curious artefacts with an almost archaeological quality.

Industrial Makeshift alludes to William Morris’ 1894 lambaste of unsatisfactory mass produced goods, although in this iteration it is Hasan’s unique hand-made objects that have become makeshifts of the ubiquitous engineered products they are formed on. At the request of the designer, all proceeds from this installation are to be donated to the Northampton Market Trader’s Association.

Materials: Boiled leather, polyurethane resin, steel/brass/linen thread

INSTALLATION OPENING TIMES:

23 & 24 July 10 - 5pm
30 & 31 July 10 - 5pm
1 August 12 - 5pm

See also:

.

Vases by Simon Hasan	Furniture by Simon Hasan	Baked by Formafantasma