No such thing as a vegetable
Turnip hook
A short, interrupted 4 day project to explore design and making using vegetables as inspiration (or not if there is no such thing as a vegetable). Each member of the class pulled a slip of paper from a hat with the name of a vegetable on it.
I got 'turnip' and started doodling as I pondered the challenge.
I considered different ways to use a turnip and the contrast between a fresh and a stale or processed turnip:
wet/ dry
tasty/ disgusting
heavy/ light
solid/ viscous and lumpy (cooked and mashed)/ fluid and consistent (dry powder or powdered and mixed with water)
purple (exposed to light above ground)/ white (bottom half immersed in the earth)
hard (body)/ soft (leaves)
static (body)/ motion (leaves)
I thought about the turnip as a tuber, an energy store and how I might convert the energy for it be used in a way other than as a foodstuff. A turnip might be processed in various ways: grated and dried; sliced and dried; peeled/ flaked and dried; spiralled and dried; dried and powdered. Different processes would produce different forms, shapes, sizes, textures. How might these different characteristics be used as inspiration?
After a while I came back to one of the most obvious characteristics of the turnip: its bulk. How might that be used without additional processing? As an anchor or counterweight? A simple container?
In the end, my original, absent minded doodle of the giant turnip that the farmer could not pull out of the ground, combined with my thoughts on its bulky, anchor-like quality and its purple/ white colour led me to see it as something that is both in and out of the earth. From this I started to explore objects that might be separate, but join one another, one being both inside and outside of the other, perhaps whilst their bulk or shape either kept them together and/or hindered their separation unless a particular action was taken or secret known.
I came up with the Turnip Hook: a hook that can be removed from a board or wall, taken away or repositioned for a specific purpose.
As an invention, I realise that a hook is not novel. Furthermore, neither is the concept of a removable hook capable of repositioning in a flexible, modular system: pegboards are commonly used in workshops and modularised slat and grid wall systems are seen in retail the world over.
Still, I think that the Turnip Hook has a certain elegance and simplicity to it. I like the symmetry of the hook itself. I like the neat recess that the inserted upright occupies, that fact that it stops the hook moving to the left or right and could be machined in three simple operations (a drilled front facing pocket that stops short of the back of the retaining board, a drilled, angled hole entering the same hole as the front facing pocket and exiting the back of the retaining board, and a pocket routed from the back to fit the recessed upright).
What intrigues me most is how to give additional purpose and/or meaning to the hook (turnip) that is removed from the retaining board (earth).
Picking up on Peter Marigold's recent tweet about the signing in system at Edinburgh Children's Hospital Charity, the presence or absence of a hook in a row of holes, with a particular hole and hook 'owned' by or belonging to one person could signal the presence or absence of that person.
Interestingly, the void, the hole, the absence of the hook also symbolises the person. The hole represents the person just as much as the hook. Somewhat differently, hanging a coat on the hook obscures the hook itself. The hook is there, it cannot be seen, but without it, the person would not be signalled.
The order or the positioning of the holes might represent some aspect of the people and their relationship to one another or characteristic of the person relative to the others. A mother and/or father, taller than their offspring might have higher hooks. Different characteristics of people could also be symbolised: team/ group membership, gender, power or authority (for those with a need impose their position on others!).
Additional practical uses could be given to the Turnip Hook, as a key ring for instance, giving a known place to keep them and avoid them being lost. Such applications might given additional reasons to buy the hook as a product, but I don't see them as the most interesting aspect of it.
If I were to develop the project further, it is this aspect of the Turnip Hook representing a relationship or membership of a group that I would pursue, producing versions with multiple hooks. The hook is the individual who takes it away and possesses it. The board and the position of the holes represents the relationships of the individuals that anchors them and keeps them together. The hole represents the fact that even when they are apart from one another, the group still exists. Seeing the hole reminds group members of the missing person. Ownership of the hook is like a membership card of the group, but without a name or word or image on it. It can be carried by the owner when away from the group, it reminds them of the others in the group with identical objects and of the bonds between them.
