 Hrafnkell Birgisson
Hrafnkell Birgisson was born in Reykjavík in 1969. He graduated as a product designer from the Academy of Fine Arts in Saarbrucken, Germany. His conceptual work covers the fields of product design, exhibition design and interior architecture. His work Hoch die Tassen has become a design classic, displayed in design stores and gallery shops all around the world, while the Tools You Bake baking tins and the ongoing Vik Prjonsdottir knitting-project are examples of self-initiated collaborations with fellow designers and small local manufacturers. Hrafnkell has developed and tutored courses at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, including the De-Ikea workshop, a series of classes he also tutored at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. The recently presented Cutfish, chopping and serving boards, originate from one of his courses were local manufacturers act as a starting point for intervention. His designs have been published in the International Design Yearbook 2007 and in the book Furnish from Gestalten Verlag. His work also appears in the travelling exhibition Shaping the New Century-European Design since 1985 which opened at the Indianapolis Museum of the Arts in 2009. Hrafnkell currently lives and works from Copenhagen, Denmark.
TOOLS YOU BAKE
www.toolsyoubake.com
 „Tools You Bake” is the name of a baking tin series made of aluminum, produced in a metal spinning process during rotation in a lathe. Sheet metal is shaped around wooden moulds to create hollow bodies. Innumerable wooden moulds have accumulated through four generations in the stockrooms of the 100 years old factory Hugo Brauer in Berlin. Their original function, to be used in the making of hubcaps, lids or shades, has long been forgotten.
HOCH DIE TASSEN
 Used coffee- and teacups are reclaimed from European flea markets.
The various cups tell the history of European porcelain making. The original assignment, in a short project at the HBK Saar, was to design a cup with at least two functions.
MEAT HOOKER
 Christmas in Iceland would not be complete without the 13 unruly brothers called the Yuletide Lads. For 13 nights before Christmas, every child in Iceland puts a shoe on the window sill at bedtime, hoping that the Yuletide Lad who passes by that evening will put a little something in the shoe. If the child has been good the Lad might leave behind a small present but the naughty ones got a raw potato! Meathooker comes to town to days before Christmas. He finds a residence, climbs onto the roof and dangles his hook down the chimney, hoping that its sharp point will fasten into a leg of lamb as it simmers in the pot or hangs in the smoke above the glowing embers. Meathooker is envisaged here by designer Hrafnkell Birgisson and writer Gerður Kristný. This work is a fusion of Icelandic culture, design and writing.
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