teetle - ryo yonekawa

TEETLE
ash wood hanger

IIDEX Canada 2016 banner and link to IIDEX website.

Toronto Design Offsite Festival banner. Link to Toronto Design Offsite site.

From DesignLines with love banner. Link to DesignLines blog post.

Steam bent, laminated ash hanger TEETLE is an entrant and finalist for IIDEXCanada's 2016 Woodshop Competition. First showcased at IIDEX 2016 and later Toronto Design Offsite Festival. Teetle was given a special mention on Designlines Magazine site.

Conceptually, I wanted to design a hanger that emphasized minimal production waste. Ideally, each laminates are laser cut from a roll of ash veneer, steam-bent and glued together onto a form, and finished with wood oil. Every detail is influenced by function, which led to the minimal-esque aesthetics of the design.

Preliminary sketches for the Teetle wooden hanger.

Thin, ash wood veneer blank ready to be steamed and bent.

I started off with a few conceptual sketches as well as process ideations for manufacture, keeping the limited supplies I had to work with in mind. From there on, I utilized tools from the school and local maker-space to cut the pieces to the correct dimensions.

Layers of ash wood veneer bent on a form and clamped to shape.

Wooden steam-box with many hanger prototypes clamped to forms.

Using clamps and a rough form, I managed to create some satisfactory prototypes. Of the 20 pieces I manufactured, only 2 of them came out nearly perfect to what I wanted from the product. Nevertheless, the two I did produce did an extremely good job of holding heavy jackets for an extended amount of time.

Finished Teetle, a steam-bent ash wood hanger hung on a gray wall.

TEETLEash wood hanger

TEETLE
ash wood hanger