30 Carved Wood Baseball Bats by Vincent Kohler in 'Turnaround.'

'Turnaround' is an artistic project by Vincent Kohler which focuses on the theme of the baseball bat. It consists of a collection of thirty baseball bats, turned on a lathe using different species of woods. Each bat is unique in form, and a book combining texts by various authors and photographs was specially done on the subject for this project.

The 30 Bats:




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The bats in use by the Challengers Baseball Club of Zurich:





The project has been implemented thanks to the cultural percentage allocated to the building of the Heerenschürli sports center in Schwamendingen - Zurich, which includes the first ballpark in Switzerland that conforms to the game’s regulations.

Official Baseball Bat Rules, Article 110:

(a) The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2 3 / 4 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.
Note: No laminated or experimental bats shall be used in a professional game (either championship season or exhibition games) until the manufacturer has secured approval from the Rules Committee of his design and methods of manufacture.

(b) Cupped Bats. An indentation in the end of the bat up to one inch in depth is permitted and may be no wider than two inches and no less than one inch in diameter. The indentation must be curved with no foreign substance added.

(c) The bat handle, for not more than 18 inches from its end, may be covered or treated with any material or substance to improve the grip. Any such material or substance, which extends past the 18 inch limitation, shall cause the bat to be removed from the game.
Note: If the umpire discovers that the bat does not conform to (c) above until a time during or after which the bat has been used in play, it shall not be grounds for declaring the batter out, or ejected from the game.

(d) No colored bat may be used in a professional game unless approved by the Rules Committee.

Baseball fans will really appreciate the in-depth text that accompanies the project and it is available to read in French, English and German here.

Production: ville de Zürich - Amt für Hochbauten, Fachstelle Kunst und Bau.
photos by Geoffrey Cottenceau

Turnaround by Vincent Kohler

100 Wooden Toy Cars By 100 Different Designers: TobeUs

above: one of the more uusual wooden toy cars, Tomoki Azumi's 'Would You Like A Slice Of Toast?'



Matteo Ragni has gathered together 100 masters of design from all over the world including Karim Rashid, Marcel Wanders, Barber Ogersby, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Jaime Hayon, Fabio Novembre and Setsu & Shinobu Ito to name but a few. With these globally renowned designers and the support of Alessi, Ragni created “100% TobeUs: 100 designers for 100 new toy cars.”



TobeUs was born as a result of a designer who had become a father and couldn't stand watching his own children captivated by toys just for a few hours and then destroying or growing bored of them. According to Matteo Ragni the easiest solution to this is to give children the possibility to 'love' an object.

To accomplish this, Ragni felt the right choice of material with a recognizable smell, an unquestioned resistance to impact and texting, and, ultimately, a dignified end: recycling or re-utilization was the way to go.

This is how the idea of TobeUs was born: toy cars made of cedar wood, strong and sweet-scented, beautifully and cleverly planned by skillful and passionate designers.


above, clockwise from top left: Fabio Novembre, Paolo Lomazzi, Setsu & Shinobu Ito and Donato Durbino

Some resemble architecture, others dinosaurs. Some are incredibly aerodynamic, while others have multiple angular components. And still some are inspired by present automobiles and others double as everything from pencil holders to puzzles.

Here are some of the more unusual examples from the collection of 100:

Karim Rashid - Tobek:

Fernando and Humberto Campana - Untitled:

Marcel Wanders - Journey Of A Cedar:

Matteo Bazzicalupo - Fakir:

Barber Osgerby - Three, Two, One:

Miriam Mirri - Bed and Breakfast:

Alberto Meda - Solar Car:

Duilo Forte - 3CV:

Paolo Orlandini - Archicar:

Kazuyo Komoda - Doll Dining Car:

Mario Trimarchi - H-Onda:

Spalvieri Del Ciotto - City Car:

Marco Dessi - La Transportamatite:

Raffaella Mangiarotti - Superfast Sketch Holder:


Since its inception, designers who wanted to draw their own TobeUs have multiplied. It seems that everyone has an idea for a wooden toy car. But the project has caveats - TobeUs is made by two cuts in a wooden stump that always have the same size, so it's a project and design exercise that imposes clear limits.

You can even try your own hand at it with a downloadable template:


See all 100 designs here.

The exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan (Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia di Milano) runs from December 5th through January 13th, 2013.

Books Carved Into Intricate Japonesque Landscapes by Artist Guy Laramee.

Another novel idea. Artist Guy Laramee is a composer, an author, a painter, a film director, an anthropologist and yes, a book-carver. The Canadian multidisciplinary artist has a series of old leather bound books out of which he carves beautiful mountainous and eroded landscapes. Below are many of his pieces.



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Artist's Statement:
"The erosion of cultures – and of “culture” as a whole - is the theme that runs through the last 25 years of my artistic practice. Cultures arise, become obsolete, and are replaced by new ones. With the vanishing of cultures, some people are displaced and destroyed. We are currently told that the paper book is bound to die. The library, as a place, is finished. One might say: so what? Do we really believe that “new technologies” will change anything concerning our existential dilemma, our human condition? And even if we could change the content of all the books on earth, would this change anything in relation to the domination of analytical knowledge over intuitive knowledge? What is it in ourselves that insists on grabbing, on casting the flow of experience into concepts ?

When I was younger, I was very upset with the ideologies of progress. I wanted to destroy them by showing that we are still primitives. I had the profound intuition that as a species, we had not evolved that much. Now I see that our belief in progress stems from our fascination with the content of consciousness. Despite appearances, our current obsession for changing the forms in which we access culture is but a manifestation of this fascination.

My work, in 3D as well as in painting, originates from the very idea that ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation. The title of one of my pieces is “ All Ideas Look Alike”. Contemporary art seems to have forgotten that there is an exterior to the intellect. I want to examine thinking, not only “What” we think, but “That” we think.

So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

After 30 years of practice, the only thing I still wish my art to do is this: To project us into this thick Cloud of Unknowing."

thanks to Colossal for bringing this to my attention
images courtesy of the artist
additional images courtesy of Kastor Magazine and Artnet