Forest Spoon by Nendo
Leave it to Nendo to come up with such a cute idea as this Forest Spoon.
The spoons were created for the Japan-wide curry chain restaurant Coco Ichibanya‘s annual “Grandmother Curry” campaign in which 100,000 lucky customers win curry spoons through a lottery.
Nendo explains that since “spoons are a tool for eating, and our world is full of spoons designed for that function” they wanted to create a spoon that was interesting or fun to look at when it wasn’t performing its function. Alone, each spoon resembles a tree. Even more playful is when the spoons are brought together, they look like a forest, creating a landscape in the home.
I hope they start selling these to the public.
I think the idea of a forest spoon is a great design opportunity, and in this case I don’t think it was a very successful piece. It’s kitschy handle does not represent the forest to me, but simply an animated tree. I have experience forging spoons, and I feel that there’s a lot more that could have been incorporated into this design.