Search

Friday Five with Massimo Buster Minale of Buster + Punch

06.21.19 | By
Friday Five with Massimo Buster Minale of Buster + Punch

Architect and industrial designer Massimo Buster Minale plays the roles of both Founder and Creative Director for the energetic London-based Buster + Punch. After founding his own agency, Minale + Mann, he turned his love of motorcycles, metalwork, and music into a high-end home fashion label that features lighting, hardware, furniture, accessories, and jewelry. Buster + Punch was then born in an East London garage where Minale started creating items for everyday use from unusual materials. Since its founding he has collaborated with the likes of fashion designers, skateboarders, street artists, and athletes to reinvent everything down to the lightbulb itself. It’s obvious that Minale takes immense pride in making the everyday much more interesting. Today he’s sharing a few of his favorite things with us in this week’s Friday Five.

Photo courtesy Blacklock

1. Sunday at Blacklock
Housed in a dingy basement in Soho, London, Blacklock beckons me most Sundays to worship the holy grail of British food – The Sunday Roast. A war-time comfort food consisting of tender meat (usually beef), roast potatoes, fluffy Yorkshire puddings (oven pancakes) and ‘lashings’ of gravy, these guys take it to another level with extras like bone marrow and marmite bread and butter pudding, not to mention a killer selection of local beer.

Photo by Paul Massey

2. Matt Small
I have been obsessed with this London based street/fine artist for most of my adult life. He chooses discarded objects like car bonnets or old fridges as his canvas, and depicts young compelling faces of the discarded and undervalued young people in his community. His message is one of potential and hope, but the real power in his work is the sheer beauty hidden under the layers of oil paint and sweat. You can view his work at Nelly Duff Gallery on Columbia Road.

Image via Yann Black

3. Yann Black
I have a lot of tattoos, but I never really wanted any. At a young age I started to follow the first ‘anti-tattoo’ artist called Yann Black under the artistic guise ‘your meat is mine’. At a time when tattoo artists were preoccupied with realistic imagery, Yann Black was simply ‘sketching’ on people’s bodies. The first time I got tattooed by Yann was in Montreal and having given him a precise drawing of what I wanted, he ripped it up, chucked it in the bin, and sketched on my back for 7 hours straight… the pain was unbearable, but the result was unbelievable.

Photo via Buster + Punch

4. Metal Work
From a very young age I have been working with metal, my love for metal work led me to build my first motorbike and subsequently set-up an interior products company based around the beauty of metal. In the digital age it is more vital than ever to remain analogue, and I try and spend as much of the weekend as possible making stuff with my two sons – Otis and Bruno. Mesh is our new muse and we have used it extensively to add an exciting ‘filter’ to our Shoreditch home.

Image by Mike Stezycki

5 .The Southbank
I love walking, especially in bustling cities. I grew up not far from the Southbank and wasted endless days skateboarding under the arches of the Royal Festival Hall. If you’re visiting London for the first time, or just for a short time, make sure you walk a mile in my shoes from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge. In less than an hour you will get the best parts of London – from Big Ben to the Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe to Borough Market.

Kelly Beall is Director of Branded Content at Design Milk. The Pittsburgh-based writer and designer has had a deep love of art and design for as long as she can remember, from Fashion Plates to MoMA and far beyond. When not searching out the visual arts, she's likely sharing her favorite finds with others. Kelly can also be found tracking down new music, teaching herself to play the ukulele, or on the couch with her three pets – Bebe, Rainey, and Remy. Find her @designcrush on social.