No Screw No Glue by Joost van Bleiswijk

Dutch designer Joost van Bleiswijk has relaunched his website, which now features his No Screw No Glue range of furniture and objects.

To create the No Screw No Glue pieces, Van Bleiswijk reduces archetypal objects such as clocks and sideboards to two dimensional components, which are then laser cut and assembled by slotting the pieces together. As the name implies, the objects do not require screws, glue or other fixings.

The following information about the project is from van Bleiswijk:

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I find it interesting to work with construction methods to create forms that limit the possibilities of what I can design. I then come up with a shape and push those limitations.

The objects all have a classic and iconic feel. This is because I draw inspiration from the past and look over hundreds of years of product design. A lot of archetypes and conclusions of shapes lie in those years.

After collecting hundreds of images I create contemporary versions of long-forgotten objects such as a writing desk, standing clock, hourglass and a chessboard.

I choose the items with great care. It’s not only the style of design and the archetypical feel I find very important, but also the object itself. I therefore choose objects that tell a story, like an hourglass, a standing clock or a chessboard.

From archetypical drawings I create the objects as flat components by computer.

The method of sliding different elements into one and other, and how to draw the exact technical drawings, is now like clay for me.

I can express more and more, and as the project progresses you find more elements, more detail and more complexity. The chessboard for example contains 886 different elements.

All pieces are hand-finished after laser-cutting.

The following sequence of images show how the small clock is assembled:

Posted by Rose Etherington

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• Design