Copper Ice Cream Scoops

The use of pure copper, a metal with high thermal conductivity, presents a technical improvement to Sherman L. Kelly’s famous aluminium ice cream scoop design dating from 1935. However, due to the difficulty of casting pure copper by the lost-wax method, the scoop comes out of the mould damaged and imperfect. The scoop is restored to functional use with tin and resin. This technique of  pre-consumer repair advocates for the greater use of repair as a transformative process in the design, production and consumption of domestic objects.

This work served as major case study for my development of transformative repair concepts in my doctoral thesis, completed 2015 and available one academia.edu

Photography by Dean McCartney