JOURNAL / FIELD NOTES
Notes from the workshop
Material, process and the practical side of living with heavy objects. Written for architects, collectors and anyone specifying one of these into a room.
LATEST NOTE
Why reclaimed machine steel beats a cut stone slab
A marble slab is quarried to be uniform. A dozer blade is shaped by twenty thousand hours of load. Only one of them arrives with a drawing you could not have made.
ALL NOTES
How we document the origin of every part
A certificate that says “reclaimed steel” says nothing. Ours names the machine class, the sourcing location and the condition of the part before we touched it.
Glass on steel: why we never clamp the plate
Reclaimed steel moves with temperature and is never truly flat. A rigid clamp turns both facts into a crack. The answer is four points and an interface that gives.
Specifying heavy objects: floor loads, lifts and door widths
A written brief for architects. The three questions that decide whether an object can enter a space at all — asked before the object is chosen, not after.
Edition, made to order, bespoke — what the difference buys you
Three routes into the same workshop. They differ in how much of the object is already decided at the moment you commission it.
Sealed, not repainted: what stays on the steel
The difference between a restored part and a preserved one is a decision made in the first hour of work, and it cannot be reversed later.