From Image to Object
The Tin Barbecue, designed by Jasper Morrison Studio (image: Fabian Frinzel).
When things go wrong with people’s chairs or toasters or toilets, I’m the person at Jasper Morrison Ltd who receives their emails. While we may have designed your chair, toaster or toilet, I reply, we did not make it. Please could you get in touch with the manufacturer?
But Jasper’s book The Hard Life (2017), a series of photographs of objects from rural life in Portugal, drawn from a collection in Lisbon’s National Museum of Ethnology, inspired us to enter manufacturing ourselves and make things we could sell in the Jasper Morrison Shop. Amidst The Hard Life’s sickles and hay forks were several object typologies that we felt could be useful in modern, urban living. What about that small terracotta barbecue on page 13? The studio conjured up the dimensions that would bring the photograph to life.
It was imperative to have the barbecue made in Portugal. We knew a designer there who could help, and he soon became our intermediary to a distinguished potter. Over a year later, a small batch of barbecues arrived at the office. Those that survived the journey – half did not – beautifully captured the charm of the object in the photograph. Excited, we realised we had better try it. It cooked brilliantly. But the rim cracked dramatically from the heat. We tested one after another, always with the same result.
A year later, we were able to find an intermediary to a new potter. We also realised that the barbecue in the photograph had metal bars. Could that hold the answer? This potter told us that his father used to make this very object and sent us a photograph of an exquisite example. We were encouraged, but disappointed when a prototype arrived – it was in pieces, but still it was clear that it had lacked the elegance of our first model. We sent the potter our first model and a more detailed drawing, and asked if he could copy it. (It arrived at his studio broken.) A second prototype came from the potter, undamaged, and with metal bars and a protective, heat-resistant cement coating, but its character was even further from what we intended. When we tested this version, it cracked, and the protective coating drained away in the London rain.
Another year passed and it so happened that a young designer in Portugal called Nuno Viola sent Jasper a gift of a mini barbecue similar to that in The Hard Life. He’d found it in a traditional ceramic shop. We told Nuno about our failed attempts to engineer the one in the photograph. Would he be interested in helping us? He quickly found a potter and we sent him our drawing. It was a few months before Nuno reported bad news. He had tested several variations made by the potter and they had all cracked. He sent us a sample anyway – it was the ugliest yet.
In the meantime, Nuno had sent us photographs of a very tidy tinsmith along with his workshop and wares. In light of our failures with terracotta, why not try the barbecue in tin? The studio rustled up a new drawing particular to the material and, in no time, we received a prototype. It looked right, cooked well and stayed intact. Tin has transformed the charm of this object, but it has charm all the same. The mystery of the terracotta version remains.
Words Miranda Clow
Photograph Fabian Frinzel
This article was originally published in Disegno #37. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.