Product design as a creative outlet
““Making a jar for the meat chili””
I have a significant soft spot for the type for historical objet de voyage a la Inro. When I go to museums or read historical books on travel (Lionel Casson’s Travel in the Ancient World is an excellent read on that topic) I’m continually struck by the material nature of pre-modern travel, and the degree to which someone had to be willing to not only uproot their lives, but their actual physical household in order to travel. As a travelling minimalist who routinely tries to do multi-month excursions in a single backpack, I see clear parallels to the necessity of preparing for historical travel and how many people, particularly religious pilgrims going on extended journeys, would need to prepare.
Juji Kisshobun Makie Inrō, 1800s, Japan
Travel objects like Inrō were necessary for calligraphic supplies, medicines, spices, and other miscellaneous goods
A lot of my own creative work has been focused on reflections on travel objects; what would many of these look like had the tradition continued on into modernity, not just as a semi-fossilized vestigial limb of a traditional craft, but as a living utilitarian tradition. Naturally, I began thinking of what this would mean for myself, and curious if I could make anything which walks the line between utilitarian and artistic, while not just being a reflex of something lifted from another culture.
So, naturally, I decided to make a storage container to travel with Lao Gan Ma.
I chose this because I’d been messing around with a few designs and I’m waiting on Shapeways to send me the components for another project I’ve got going on. I needed something which presented a slight design challenge (I’m new to Fusion 360, not to 3D modelling, however) and which solved a problem basically nobody has tried to solve. I wanted something that
Wouldn’t break
Wouldn’t leak
Doesn’t inherently resemble anything else similar on the market
Finally, I have a sense of physicality in objects that I can’t quite put to words. It’s why wabi-sabi is one of the main sections I have on this site. So, to start with, I chose an internal volume which would allow me to store a lot, if I’m away from stores for a few weeks I want to be able to season my rice repeatedly, plus share, and not one so big that I’m basically hauling around a full 700g jar of Lao Gan Ma with me. One issue I have is a general distrust of screwtops; have a few too many tubes of toothpaste detonate in your bag and you may feel the same way. So, for now, we have two components being milled with a set screw holding them together.
I definitely see the knurls cutting into the surrounding, don’t worry.
This entire project feels bigger, literally, than others I’ve attempted with this type of volumetric work. I’m intentionally picking a project with some annoying engineering challenges, such it being airtight or locking shut, but it’s so far been a decently fun learning exercise. This entire project, if I get around to having it machined, is going to be a lesson in minimizing points of failure and understanding machining tolerances. Maybe not the most useful for eating some Lao Gan Ma while I’m backpacking, but perhaps more useful in my everyday life.