Nendo: Sekki cutlery set

Kobayashi Kogyo is a metalwork firm located in the cradle of modern Japan’s metal cutlery industry, the city of Tsubame in Niigata Prefecture. The firm was founded in 1868, the first year of Japan’s modern era, and enjoys a strong reputation for its command of metal production techniques, including polishing.

Nendo and Kobayashi Kogyo designed a three-piece dessert cutlery set to show off the firm’s strengths, for Seibu Department Store in Japan. The silhouette of the spoon, fork and knife are warped and crooked, to recall prehistoric flint implements. It’s difficult to make the pieces’ rough, nonstandard forms by machine, so the firm had to rely on its artisans’ sensibility, skill and handwork.  The pieces’ thickness and weight recalls stone, too, and we flattened the pieces’ backs to further make the connection with cutlery carved from lumps of stone, pressing the metal sheets seven times, rather than the usual one. We sandblasted the concave areas of the surface for a matte finish and polished the rest to a mirror-like smoothness and shine, so that the pieces feel carved out of the metal. Each stage of the complex process was only possible thanks to the unparalleled skills of Kobayashi Kogyo’s artisans. And each piece of cutlery itself resembles a primitive tool, carved from a lump of rock.