Decommissioned, discarded, dead.

In our daily lives - at home, at work and the industries around us - the volume of material resources discarded as no longer fit for purpose is staggering. Our cleverness has created various processes to dispose and obscure our waste from view. While attitudes are changing, the design and use of many materials remains linear, bookended by extraction and end-of-life.

Waste or Wasted?

We throw "away" without acknowledging, or importantly - taking ownership of, where "Away" is. Scraps and offcuts no longer meeting a specific metric, desired form or function are decommissioned and discarded.

We can pause to consider that labelling something as "waste" depends on the context. Perceptions of value are similarly linked to context. 

We're interested in how our perceptions of lifespan and value for a particular object or its component parts, might be uncoupled. Untethered, the utility and value of these materials have the chance to be reimagined individually or as component parts of new forms.

Recycle vs Upcycle

Recycling is understood as a process of breaking down waste in order to create something new. In contrast, upcycling approaches waste with a far more creative optimism. Rather than just repairing or upgrading, upcycling transforms waste from a state of low value and utility into something functional new, useful and with a far higher value.

Necromancers of detritus. We reanimate the dead.

We rescue locally-sourced materials that would otherwise be destined for landfill and remake them into new, useful goods that are ready for adventure. With a little creative effort we can keep these precious materials in circulation. 

The goods we make are one's you'll fall in love with.

Practical goods

Functional design

Not too ugly

The materials we get our hands on to work with often arrive with a rich backstory. Each piece that we re-make retains these stories. Reincarnated as new forms, these stories will be folded into your own. 

If it looks useful it's tough to ignore it and walk past... 

The production of many new items creates a wealth of offcuts that are too quickly dumped. Other items are decommissioned after hitting some set safety limit or abandoned after falling off-trend or out-of-season. So much stuff bagged up for landfill, dumped on the roadside or tangled in seaweed along the littoral fringes of our coastlines.

Sometimes a little restoration and repair can get a piece of gear back in action. However, if a piece is beyond repair, there's often useful material and functional hardware that can be salvaged and stored for another incarnation.

We look for opportunities to engage local producers and businesses to identify what of their waste, offcuts or decommissioned materials have the potential to be rewoven back into new narratives.

What FNC re-makes is both new and not

We aim to honour the origins and characteristics of these rescued materials by sharing their heritage of with each of our products. Discover what they were, where and with whom. Rather than a novelty, it's an invitation for us to pause and look again at the material things we temporarily take ownership of. This also provides an opportunity to acknowledge our impact as consumers and inspire creative ways in which we might reinterpret our ideas of waste and our roles as stewards of the spaces we inhabit.

Head to our Shop to see the latest unique pieces that are available.

The Maker

Hi, I'm Ian - the bloke pictured above in my studio workshop at the back of our house here in Sligo on the northwest coast of Ireland.

Surfing, hiking, biking and camping have been common threads in my life since I was a kid. Over the years I've continued to make opportunities to create in these spaces through illustration, design and making.

If you've not already, you can follow what we're doing on Instagram at @folkncrafty

Thanks for reading.

Ian.