Mortarpestool
It's about time that we bring the physicality of cooking back to kitchen culture, and celebrating the collaboration between gravity and hummanpower is how we do it.
An object that celebrates the qualities that cooking has always embodied, but has unfortunately lost over the past decades. The mortarpestool seeks to challenge accepted assumptions about what it means to spend time in the kitchen, to propose an alternative perspective on cooking, and to inspire new ways in which food can be processed.
The realization of the mortarpestool came about following close analysis of kitchen appliances and gadgets on the market, on top of a thorough search on communal cooking on Google—results included candid moments and blog entries of aboriginal families preparing food in the intimate environment of cooking huts in Mexico, mothers slicing fruits and vegetables in the palms of their hands in Zambia, and both men and women taking to the sidewalks to cook and eat in Vietnam, but little to no information on or images of communal cooking in Western cultures save for stock photos of the ideal nuclear family preparing food in the showroom kitchen. Also worth noting is the fact that communal cooking seemed to take place in communities that remained unaffiliated with urbanization; in other words, remaining isolated from technological advancement had consequently fostered in these communities a kitchen culture that held onto the physical, social, and emotional qualities that have begun to disappear from food preparation in America.
So what does it mean to be efficient in the kitchen, and what makes time and hygiene the preferred units by which we measure efficiency?
The realization of the mortarpestool came about following close analysis of kitchen appliances and gadgets on the market, on top of a thorough search on communal cooking on Google—results included candid moments and blog entries of aboriginal families preparing food in the intimate environment of cooking huts in Mexico, mothers slicing fruits and vegetables in the palms of their hands in Zambia, and both men and women taking to the sidewalks to cook and eat in Vietnam, but little to no information on or images of communal cooking in Western cultures save for stock photos of the ideal nuclear family preparing food in the showroom kitchen. Also worth noting is the fact that communal cooking seemed to take place in communities that remained unaffiliated with urbanization; in other words, remaining isolated from technological advancement had consequently fostered in these communities a kitchen culture that held onto the physical, social, and emotional qualities that have begun to disappear from food preparation in America.
So what does it mean to be efficient in the kitchen, and what makes time and hygiene the preferred units by which we measure efficiency?
