Home-Made Europe: Contemporary Folk Artifacts - Hardcover

Across 256 pages, this small but enlightening anthology brings together such DIY "products" as an outdoor shower assembled from school bus doors; and a makeshift table topped with a street sign, which looks as if it belongs in a hipster loft.--David Dick-Agnew "Azure " The objects we buy are supposed to tell us something about who we are. But they don't tell us half as much as the objects we make, as even a quick flick through Home-Made Europe: Contemporary Folk Artifacts reveals. Here are everyday things people have fashioned with their own hands. Heaters, hammers, anchors, rat-traps, barbecues, showers and goalposts. They range from the pitiful - a child's grill for corn on the cob, rigged out of wires bent over tea lights - to the technically impressive - one man made a fridge. This is a catalogue of human resourcefulness.--Justin McGuirk "The Guardian " Home-made Europe, by Vladimir Arkhipov, is a humble tribute to home-spun DIY. The Russian artist criss-crossed Europe to find ordinary people who have addressed their household needs with extraordinary inventions, often involving bits of other household objects.--Editors "Wallpaper* "

In this second volume of home-made artifacts, Russian artist Vladimir Arkhipov has travelled across Europe to further his collection. The objects he has found are made by everyday people inspired to create something themselves, rather than buying manufactured goods. His archive includes hundreds of objects created with idiosyncratic functional qualities: an Austrian ski-bob made using an old bicycle frame, and a device from Germany that enables a musician to play three brass tubas at once. Featuring 230 individual artifacts from Albania, Austria, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and Wales, accompanied by a photograph of the creator, their story of how the object came about, its function and the materials used to create it. The book is an essential companion to the first volume by the same author, expanding its theme. Here the objects are more recent, suggesting that the home-made phenomenon transcends simple necessity. Many have been made in pursuit of a hobby, or because the maker had the time and inclination to construct something personal. But with others (in Albania for example) the objects feel like they might be more vital to the maker’s livelihood.