Process, letters & words - the blog of MATT INNES
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I just got back from a rather wonderful two week jaunt back to Japan. Tokyo, Kyoto & Numazu to visit Saori’s family. I instagrammed the hell out of it. Thanks so much to friends and family for making it such a great trip.
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Another typographic exploration in timber. This one a personal books shelf. It’s never going to hold a thousand books, but there should be just enough space in the counters to fit enough of the books that you actually want to read. It’s now in the initial sand stage. Still have to do some more filing & sanding, then on to oil & wax. This time around have experimented with jarrah-faced birch ply & much thicker slices.
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From Hermitude’s Melbourne show in March. More details on the visuals over in the main site. This was a bit of a landmark for the guys, everything came together, great album, crowd support, great production as always & a full visual set to hold it all together. Epic show.
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Hello long-neglected blog! Updates with two recent bike builds. Firstly, the mark 3 upgrade of my single speed. It gained a nice 60s/70s vintage track frame with beautiful Nervex lugwork, possibly by Ron Blundell, a Melbourne frame builder, lovingly repainted by Joe at MotoPaint Clinic in a custom BMW grey metallic flake, also some phil wood + velocity wheels. The whole thing was put together by Sasha at Pony Bikes, who also took some nice photos of it that ended up over on Cycle Exif. Another build, slightly less photographed (though loved no less) was of a beautiful 1978 Peugeot PSN frame ebay find, Reynolds 531 tubes (with original stickers), built up with copper-railed brooks saddle, shimano 600 cranks, VO hubs, bars & fenders, H+Son rims & old-school Grand Bois gumwalls for a classic parisian-style town bike. Grace note ? The tubes ring like a bell when tapped.
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A rather long time between blog posts & a rather overdue process post on the ampersand table project. Studio shots are over on my folio site, but here are some of the build shots. This one went much smoother than the Tozai tables, as we’re a bit more used to the whole process. And the table is in regular use now. And i’ve only dropped the pepper through the counters once so far..
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Some higher quality photographs of my first set of type tables. East / 東 + West / 西. Reads horizontally or vertically stacked. Size is 500x500x240mm per character. Compound word is tozai / 東西 meaning east-west or the wider world.
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The first of my type tables is complete. Certainly there was a learning curve to climb when adjusting the brackets on a serif requires a wood file, bastard file, 4 grades of sandpaper, scandinavian oil, wax and several layers of my skin. But well worthwhile, despite many many problems, the final product is looking good. Just have to finish off the west table & then will properly photograph them as the set they are intended to be.
For any non-japanese readers who are interested in the etymology of the character, here is the wiktionary entry: 東 / higashi /east on wiktionary It is commonly believed to be a combination of the kanji for sun 日 and tree 木, depicting the sun rising behind a tree in the east.
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After various small & medium scale tests, i’ve finally progressed to full size (500x500mm) with my type tables. Here are the raw pieces, back from the cutters and slightly cleaned up. Hardwood ply gives the edges a nice range of tones but at around 1kg per slice, these are not going to be light objects.
Next up, glueing, pins, clamps, sanding, staining, plenty of late nights, lots of noise and sawdust & a lot of coffee. Hopefully, what i’ve been imagining all this time will come out the other side as i picture it…
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It’s been a long winter & while i’ve had these shirts in hand for a while, this has been the first sunny day when i could actually get around to photographing these suckers. Hideously un-pc ironic cyclewear for those sunny days when you’re freewheeling down a long hill and pass a fixie-ist windmilling his suginos off. Remember to give him a nice smile as you go past. Limited numbers available, girls S, guys M & L, charcoal grey marle & black only. Great shirt fit & top notch print quality from Dion at While You Sleep. Drop me a line if you want one.
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Finally finished my 1968 s402BTII rabbit restoration. This is the first of my scooters that i have rebuilt from the frame upwards with 100% new / new old stock / replated parts. I certainly learned a lot, it was the first time i’ve rebuilt an engine by myself (mostly – thanks Dion!), and having it start & run healthily was certainly a feeling of achievement. Its also quite an odd feeling to ride this bike, which feels entirely new (and the engine needs to be run in for the first 1000km, because its internal parts are all new) – despite being originally built in 1968.
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