Bamboo iPhone 4 case
There is not much to say, as a custom bamboo case for an iPhone pretty much tells its own story …
The case is made by a small and highly energized team at Grove in Oregon. They started from the intersection of Joe Mansfield (laser engraving) and Ken Tomita (contemporary Japanese furniture); then add in Chris Rizzo (CNC industrial design). Along the way they also managed to enlist nearly every member of their extended family and friends. The result are machined bamboo cases with a high degree of accuracy, fit, and finish … and customizable with laser engraved artwork.
The cases are very nice, very different from the mainstream, and are a bit more expensive than some injection molded polymer. All of that is just fine by me.
An interesting side note – even their packaging has their high level of attention to detail – part of the packaging used to ship the case is actually the cut-off waste from the CNC process; sanded and finished so it can be used as a small picture frame ! (AIGA presentation here)
Given the case is made from bamboo *and* I have done a lot of work in bamboo (dining table, kitchen, other, …) I ordered my case even before I ordered my phone. The question then became "plain", "artist", or "custom". I had always loved the stained glass artwork titled, "an Bradan Feasa" or "the Salmon of Knowledge" by Oisín Mac Suibhne.
I wanted to use Suibhne’s artwork or something similar but did not want to infringe on his intellectual and artistic property rights. I was able to contact him and he was very kind to allow me to work with his sketches to transition it into something that could make the transition to laser engraving.
It took some time and about four attempts. I used GIMP and my Toshiba M200 tablet for the graphics work. My reference layers were a combination of the original sketches and the stained glass photos. On my fourth attempt, I was able to reproduce the two key elements of the fish and the "eye" of the window. The "title" at the bottom is my own hand writing, using a pressure sensitive stylus and the tablet.
The result is unbelievably fine detain and wonderful to look at.
Many thanks to Oisín Mac Suibhne for allowing me to use his artwork and to the entire Grove team for creating such tangible art with their bamboo iPhone cases!
