BAIT PRESS & MICHAEL

Michael bought this at Brick Lane in east London roughly twenty years ago. He thought it was beautiful but didn’t know what it was. A quick search revealed it to be a tool for preparing fishing bait. Bread is compressed by turning the butterfly screw, this delays it’s disintegration in the water. The press was manufactured in the mid to late 50s by Lesney, they also made die cast toy cars. Michael accumulates all sorts of odd objects, as a designer he uses them as a kind of research into the nature of things; ‘I think there’s a powerful right-ness to things like these. Like most tools, they’re things that just kind of evolved, most likely via the knowledge of a production engineer, rather than a designer and this gives them their right-ness. They have a subtly engineered elegance and beauty that comes from processing material in a sensitive and efficient fashion.’

20 Feb 2011