TOOOLS is a company that makes beautiful functional products run by the wife and husband team of Caroline Hwang and Joel Speasmaker. A free-form concept that varies from hand thrown plates to locally-produced dog beds, the brand is guided by the couple’s years of experience in art direction, illustration, painting, graphic design, ceramics, cooking and life. They have worked on magazines and books and galleries and websites and recently welcomed their first child into the California sunshine.
A ceramic series called Banchan is their primary line, named for the Korean culinary tradition of small side dishes. TOOOLS has produced many numbered sets of Banchan, each a unique group of functional dishes that can be stacked to form a sculpture, all hand thrown by Hwang. Think Brancusi & kimchi.
Photographs by Julia Stotz, Styling by Caroline Hwang
Speasmaker created Treasure Box, an enigmatic storage space, his precise yet playful graphic vision brought to three dimensions.
Fabrication by Big Secret
TOOOLS most recently created Dog Beds — a modular, comfortable design inspired by a trip to Marfa (and seeing a Larry Bell painting), with geometric stitching patterns that reference Donald Judd. For the launch we teamed up with photographer Stephanie Gonot on all product and campaign imagery.
Lil Bed in Denim
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Lil Bed in Denim
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Lil Bed in Denim
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Lil Bed in Army
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Lil Bed in Army
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Lil Bed in Army
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