Veg Ends
When Leila got in touch with us to commission a set of ‘Vegetable Book Ends’, we knew it sounded right up our street. Her beautiful grocers and cafe, tucked away in the heart of Shoreditch on an offshoot of Arnold Circus, is a perfectly placed haven of phenomenal produce, sourced from distinguished farms, bakeries, dairies and butchers.
On a trip to a food market in the suburbs of Paris, Leila noticed that some of the market stalls had different home-made contraptions to keep the produce from rolling off their stall, sectioning the various vegetables and vendors from one another. Based on her pictures of the market, we designed a series of these ‘Vegetable Book Ends’, to use both inside the shop, and on the bountiful trestle table out on the street.
In such a simple object, it manages to incorporate so many design principles we look for; it’s specific yet multi-functional, designed to use the material in the most structurally efficient way, and is satisfyingly co-dependent on the objects around it in order to complete the task in hand. The more you load up the forks of the Veg End with whatever seasonal ingredient Leila has in her store, the stronger the structure becomes. Fabricated in three different sizes, the bright-orange book-ends physically hold the piles of vegetables together, whilst visually connecting the different locations around the shop in which the produce is displayed.