Unusual Familiarity

Ellie Birkhead is a recent 3D Design & Craft graduate from the University of Brighton. Having a strong interest in the lost art of Craftsmanship, Ellie has drawn attention to the declining brush-making industry in her pieces featured at Mint’s LDF15 exhibition, Twisting Tradition.

Continue reading to find out more about the pieces, and see more of her work.

Ellie’s works explore the functionality of brushes, one of Man’s earliest tools. The collection highlights and questions the often-unnoticed lives of one of the most ubiquitous and adaptable tools of human invention.

The functionality of brushes in Ellie’s project has been explored by combining elements of existing brushes to create purposefully ambiguous designs.

Many of the designs, which are all hand-made from traditional beech and hog bristle, combine the functions of existing brushes to form something new, such as the chimney sweep brush on the radiator brush handle, or the double-headed computer keyboard brush.

The vaguely familiar but unusual brushes invite the user to question, contemplate and define their functions and uses in order to explain the suggestive forms.

For any further information about Ellie’s work, please email sales@mintshop.co.uk.

Images © Ellie Birkhead