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  • phiman
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2011
    • 135

    any info on when the webshop opens up again? i'd really like to get my hands on one of dem wallets..

    Comment

    • MJRH
      Senior Member
      • Nov 2006
      • 418

      I'd misplaced this, finally found it at the bottom of a box of junk. It's an info card that came with the Grey Nurse boots I posted above. I'd meant to post alongside them, but thought I'd lost it...

      Apologies for the large size. The print is rather faded, and I couldn't figure out how to shrink it without rendering it illegible.



      Exemplary of his sense of humour.
      ain't no beauty queens in this locality

      Comment

      • CHRIS
        Banned
        • Dec 2006
        • 947

        has anyone ever purchased anything directly from sruli recht? i've been trying to purchase one of their fish skin whalets for about a month now, and they've responded to about one or two of my six emails. they asked if i was interested in purchasing one, to which i said yes, and then i never heard back.

        Comment

        • dream
          Senior Member
          • Nov 2007
          • 127

          Originally posted by CHRIS View Post
          has anyone ever purchased anything directly from sruli recht? i've been trying to purchase one of their fish skin whalets for about a month now, and they've responded to about one or two of my six emails. they asked if i was interested in purchasing one, to which i said yes, and then i never heard back.
          I ordered a wallet from them and the communication was great. still waiting on it's arrival though but that's a different issue.

          Comment

          • Chim
            Senior Member
            • Dec 2006
            • 427

            I ordered a fish skin whalet from them probably 3 years ago, went smooth and without a hitch through their webstore. The whalet looks like complete crap now, I would recommend going for the horseskin version as the fish skin dessicates into this really ghetto texture, in a non aesthetically pleasing way.

            Comment

            • (((o
              Senior Member
              • May 2009
              • 207

              An old interview I found while browsing for news from Hönnunarmars 2012. It's a bit dated but interesting to read nonetheless.

              Part 1 and Part 2.

              Part 1: "Macrobiotic Fractal-based Production Methods" and more.

              One of the most interesting creatives we met in Reykjavik was industrial designer, fashion designer and illustrator Sruli Recht, whose true job title is as difficult to define as his origin and his accent; Recht is a product of Israel, Melbourne, London, and now Reykjavik. His influences are similarly eclectic, spanning Futurism, Cyberpunk, Russian Constructivism, and the writings of Phillip K. Dick and Bruce Sterling.


              [photo credit: Marino Thorlacius]

              Recht is a champion of what he calls the Non-Product, "a specially-made low-run piece, either hand-tooled or machine-made, that would lose its context as a mass-produced item, and is not viable to produce in large quantities. And/or an item that is in concept stage as a byproduct of the previous," and has keen ideas for what the future of production should be--Recht practices "a more honest approach to production," as he puts it. And his new homebase of Reykjavik comes with its own production idiosyncrasies: Water-jet-cutting and laser-cutting, ordinarily expensive elsewhere, is cheap in Iceland due to its geothermal power, but getting certain types of materials in is logistically impossible. On a typically sunny/cloudy Reykjavik day, Recht invited us into his workshop (a.k.a. "The Armoury") to tell us all about it.



              Core77: First off, why is this place called "The Armoury?"

              Sruli Recht: An Armoury is a place where arms are manufactured, and a place where items are available for a particular purpose. I liked the irony. The Icelanders don't seem to get it - they really do think we sell weapons, and we have maybe three visitors to the store a day just looking for guns.

              Tell us about your "macrobiotic fractal-based production system."

              I need to come up with simpler name than that.

              This method grew out of the "Non-product" idea - it is the system we use to produce low-run products. Macrobiotic, meaning the intent to use as much locally produced raw material as possible, and fractal meaning we set up a specific model of manufacture that allows the volume of production to be scaled up and down to any amount, irrespective of traditional/standard production minimums.

              This means that we can make just one unit and leave minute waste, and also that we can make one unit when we need to instead of having to make a minimum of 50+.

              This is largely due to the fact that almost all parts of our production come through the studio directly and that we work with other companies willing to scale their operations to suit. So to begin, for anything made out of the studio, a special relationship is created with other businesses that are willing to work to the minimum that we set, be it 5 units/meters or 45/0 - We only make what we need to sell.



              In part this came about by aiming to avoid certain challenges such as the high minimum quantities imposed by production facilities and suppliers, and falling into the trap of working with unethical companies just to lower costs, or having to over-buy materials from suppliers.

              You could see it as an attempt to a more honest approach to production. It's a reaction to the waste from overproduction in this world where consequently words like sustainability are now in high rotation. This is about as conscious as your average landlocked business can be and still make a living, short of upcycling.

              But these are just names and ideas, not rules. I stick to them as closely as possible, but I won't sabotage an idea because I can't ride the green line 100%.



              What are some of the materials you use, and why?

              Mostly natural occurring materials - wool, cotton, concrete, cardboard, carbon, and now more recently leather from lambs, horses and fish. I use them because they are real. There is such a huge wealth of materials to use that come from the environment. I really enjoy the mix of digitally precise lines in these organic analogue materials.


              [Sketches by Megan Herbert]

              Iceland has a very strange mix of raw materials - the sheep are everywhere, there are three times as many horses as people, we are surrounded by fish and Iceland is the world's foremost tanner of fish skin (in particular the carnivorous pest species of Nile Perch that is destroying Lake Victoria), sea birds, lava stone.... The interesting thing is how accidentally holistic the cycle is here; the sheep are grown, shorn seasonally and every part of it is eaten by people, the face, the genitals, etc., and finally the skin is sent to the tannery. Pets are very few and are a sign of luxury, like in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," which means livestock is not grown for pet food. The same goes for horses, which are ridden until they die, at which point they are eaten by people and the skins are tanned.... And of course energy. I think energy is one resource I use a lot of. In any other country the cost of water-jet or laser-cutting is super high, but here because of the geothermal power, it is actually much more affordable. It makes more sense than to work it by hand.

              This is what there is here that isn't imported, and I like those things.


              [Sketches by Megan Herbert]

              Has being located in Iceland constrained or steered you towards any particular production methods or materials?

              Well, they have totally constrained me, but in doing that they pushed ideas that I would never have come up with living in an all-access 24-hour city like New York. It has both steered the production, as I mentioned before, to as local or in-house as possible, as well as forced the focus towards local raw materials. I don't work in Icelandic wool and horse skin only because I like it; it is just that if you want to use anything else you have to import it. Unfortunately the astronomical taxes and protectionism import duties kneecap any new business aiming to produce from imported raw products or components being produced offshore. This is a formula that means that production here is unaffordable, bringing in material or produced items is taxed at a crippling rate, all making resale with profit near impossible. Then come the shipping issues... Protectionism and short-sightedness are killing the opportunity for growth.



              But maybe it is some odd blessing in disguise. Thankfully I really do like working with these materials. I get to work directly with the tanners to produce the skins and the same goes with the knitters.

              There are positive and negatives with being here. It is a very small community - the only thing I can liken it too is rural craft quantity production. The great thing is that it is a culture of people who are used to hand-oriented low runs. There is a certain bipolar situation where there are no large-scale manufacturing/production facilities on the island, but there are small factories with industrial production machinery--but the cost of using them is unaffordable due to the monopoly on the equipment and limitations of the man-hours. There are few people to run the operations, but not enough work to run them to capacity. So this means the cost of the machine time is inflated to an exorbitant price. There is also no migrant labour force or historical knowledge base - so labour is then priced at the maximum rate. What this means is that if you want to make anything here you are basically paying retail prices to do production intended for wholesale.

              With these constraints in mind, the studio has developed from workshop to small-scale factory itself. It has, in a sense, made me want to localise production almost entirely. I mean on one hand everything is still hand- and machine-made, and on the other hand it is made as I just mentioned, in such a way that it can be produced in high quantity with minimal waste.



              Are there any other Iceland-specific effects on your work?

              Since moving here, probably the greatest influence has been the use of the saga in Icelandic culture. Narrative, the story, has always fascinated me, and being here has influenced me to take the story and mix it in with the non-product in such a way that I often wonder [which of the two] my clientele is actually buying.
              i've seen things you people wouldn't believe

              Comment

              • (((o
                Senior Member
                • May 2009
                • 207

                Part 2: A Product Rundown

                Sruli Recht has a strange sense of humor. We journalists were at a party at the Iceland Design Center when one of the partygoers had a bit too much Brennavin, sat on an unstable table laden with bottles of red wine, and sent the whole thing crashing noisily to the ground. Recht walked in right about that time; spied the huge puddles of red liquid all over the ground; pulled a camera out of his pocket, pressed it into someone's hands, and hit the deck to pose for a crime-scene photo:

                [image courtesy Brian Fichtner]

                Sruli Wrecked

                During conversation Recht likes to ride the line between funny and uncomfortable, with a deadpan delivery of transgressive subject matters that sends the jokeometer needle wavering, unable to distinguish sarcasm from earnestness; that sense of humor is also evident in his product designs, some of which are produced in extraordinary circumstances--how many product designers do you know that have smuggled tanned whale penises across the International Date Line?

                The products are better described in Recht's own words, so we'll let him do the talking.


                Minke Dorks boots

                The Minke Dorks are a series of coincidences combined. Actually the first night I met Heimir [Sverrisson, film director] we began talking about how Iceland had just announced it would begin whaling again in early- to mid-2006. At the same time I was putting together that shoe collection. The conversation naturally took to "What do they do with all the whale that isn't eaten...and what can I use that will be thrown out?" I tracked down some hunters and spoke with them about this - what is discarded and what is salvageable. It turns out the only part that is tannable is the foreskin. So I took a box of frozen penises to the north of the country to a leather tanner I had heard could tan anything. And he could. These are the guys I still work with to make the other leather I still use.

                I then had to smuggle the tanned skins into Australia with invoices saying they were just fish skins, so as to take them to the producer that was making my samples.


                Masked - In-Flight Leather Paper
                Air-Purifying Respirators and Eye-Masks


                Masked - In Flight is a series of four folded travel masks, air-purifying respirators and eye-masks for sleeping and breathing. Unlike everything else on the webstore, these are as yet unreleased.

                This one comes back to both the use of natural materials and making travel objects. I spend too much time watching what people do on planes and in airports. They are uncomfortable and lack privacy; they sit there sleeping and exposed, breathing the same recycled air as the other hundreds of rundown passengers.

                When exactly did the modern marvel that is Air Travel become so undignified? It has lost its glamour. "Yes sir/ma'am, I really do need you to publicly disrobe, empty your carefully packed bags from all electronics (read - anything made in a factory in the last 15 years) and walk on this dirty floor in your socks, with your trousers falling off, through that gate toward the little man that will now touch your armpits and poke your scrotum." Thank you Brothers Wright.

                It comes from the same place as the ~Elt, a solution to the problem of airports and planes - just a little bit of privacy in an otherwise overexposed situation.

                And I like masks. The only thing that is lacking is a head-up display.


                The Umbuster

                I am currently being prosecuted for weapons posession by the Icelandic authorities for making The Umbuster. We were basically raided. They took the four they found, and left the one I have a license for.


                The Carbon Dater

                All the objects from the studio relate to a moment in my life, generally one where I need something - a belt, a notebook, shoes...and going back further, clothes. This one though I made as a gift for my brother who is studying photography. I wanted him to be able to sign his work without putting a signature on the print, which always looks terrible. I was thinking about a tour him and I were on in an old mansion when were about 11, and the guide telling us a story about a girl living there in the 19th century who had taken her mother's diamond ring and written her name into the window glass. You really had to move around to see the scratch refract the light. This was the perfect solution to an uninterrupted view of a signed image: Just make a pen with a diamond in the tip.

                The result, Carbon Dater, is a black diamond-tipped carbon pen for writing and illustrating directly into glass, for "carbon dating." It is a .30 carat black diamond set in a milled brass claw, fixed to a hand-tooled, laser-engraved inanimate carbon rod presented in an inked 304-piece hinged cardboard box. So the sub-humour is that you have new carbon and old carbon and you write time into glass - you "carbon date."

                That idea came in 2007 and it took a long time to develop it into a product. It crosses industrial and jewelry design in a very delicate and tricky way.
                i've seen things you people wouldn't believe

                Comment

                • trentk
                  Senior Member
                  • Oct 2010
                  • 709

                  Originally posted by (((o View Post
                  how many product designers do you know that have smuggled tanned whale penises across the International Date Line?
                  signature material
                  "He described this initial impetus as like discovering that they both were looking at the same intriguing specific tropical fish, with attempts to understand it leading to a huge ferocious formalism he characterizes as a shark that leapt out of the tank."

                  Comment

                  • the-orb
                    Senior Member
                    • Jun 2009
                    • 137

                    I'm still confused after reading about it in a couple of places, but does The Armoury shop in Reykjavik actually sell any clothing items other than footwear? I'm talking about jackets, pants, tees, etc.

                    Comment

                    • Faust
                      kitsch killer
                      • Sep 2006
                      • 37852

                      Yes..
                      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                      StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                      Comment

                      • Faust
                        kitsch killer
                        • Sep 2006
                        • 37852

                        P.S. - I just wanted to add for those asking about the e-shop. If you just email Sruli's studio with any purchasing inquiries directly, they will sort you out.
                        Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                        StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                        Comment

                        • (((o
                          Senior Member
                          • May 2009
                          • 207

                          Just thought this should be here as well in case someone missed it. I'm really excited to see what he has in store for us this time.

                          Circumsolar

                          and fragments of dying light

                          For the spring and summer 2013 season, Sruli Recht presents runway and performance within the epic spaces of Palais Brongniart. Featuring an original score from acclaimed composer Nico Muhly and the choreography and performance of special guest artist.

                          SATURDAY JUNE 30th, 2012

                          2, Place de la Bourse

                          5 pm (INVITATION ONLY)

                          For invitation enquiries: contact@srulirecht.com +3545344238

                          circumsolar
                          in a body much older
                          hard-backed, bolder
                          I've swung out just too far.

                          and in this sun it's colder
                          where there’s heat, it just smoulders
                          what’s left's the new-order
                          under this broken white fader

                          I'm The Invader.
                          a Nether Lander
                          Outrider
                          the Dawn Trader
                          a Bit Meddler
                          and Beat Breaker

                          this old coder.
                          scratched
                          a joyrider

                          shudder.

                          and take it down to the cellular
                          when the orbit’s irregular
                          for a path that is annular
                          to shift the remnants exterior

                          so, by the antics
                          of a brittle respite
                          through withered flight
                          and the disrupted night

                          comes circumsolar,
                          and all fragments
                          of the dying light
                          i've seen things you people wouldn't believe

                          Comment

                          • (((o
                            Senior Member
                            • May 2009
                            • 207

                            And some pictures from the Field Dressing presentation.









                            i've seen things you people wouldn't believe

                            Comment

                            • (((o
                              Senior Member
                              • May 2009
                              • 207










                              i've seen things you people wouldn't believe

                              Comment

                              • (((o
                                Senior Member
                                • May 2009
                                • 207










                                i've seen things you people wouldn't believe

                                Comment

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