Beautiful project about the difference between mass production (and consumption) and handmade. I hope I am right in feeling people are getting tired of 20th century consumerism and re-appreciating handicraft.
This toaster was built from scratch by Thomas Thwaites, a design student at the Royal College of Art, London, as a project in extreme self-sufficiency and to highlight the effects of mass production we take for granted.
Using a £5 ($8) toaster as a model he spent a 9-month period, gathering the raw material by hand from mines across the UK and processing them himself. He smelted the iron ore in an old microwave.
The final product cost close to £1200 ($2000), more than 200 times the cost of his shop-bought model. The toaster will be on display at the RCA Summer show in London this week, where Thwaites hopes to “toast [visitors] something”.
New Scientist: Picture of the Day
