Shay Nifusi’s Monobloc Brushes “are a result of material and cultural study made as my graduation project at the Industrial Design Department in Shenkar,” he writes. “Focusing on such an arbitrary object for a graduation project came from realizing that there is a lot to learn from this small product. Simply put— every brush in the world has a handle and bristles. It’s the combination between them that tell us how, when and by whom it was made.”
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
“The process kicked off with reading subject related books, meeting a local brush maker and making brushes the traditional way (folding groups of bristles into pre-cut holes in a piece of wood).”
“I then looked for more efficient ways of making a brush and somewhere in the process I felt that using industrially made plastic hair (Polypropylene) for traditional brush making techniques is odd.”
“Looking for a way to fully industrialize the process, I started forming groups of PP bristles by pressing them in a toaster which led to develope a new way of making the product. By using molds compounded by both heat conducting and insulating parts, I could thermoform plastic hairs and create integral handles.”
“I designed the shapes in a back and forth experimentation between studying natural flow of the PP hair groups and sculpting similar archetypes in Polyurethane foam. The process resulted in a new way of making brushes in CNC milled aluminium & SikaBlock molds.”
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
The assignment wasn’t recent—Nifusi gained his degree in 2013, and after years of working in ID, has since switched over to ME—but I think the project is a great example of manufacturing experimentation by a student, and I found the resultant objects beautiful.
Source: core77