Carl Clerkin

Cardboard Copy (Digital Donkey)

Carl Clerkin

A few years ago my younger brother Kieron bought a mark 2 Penguin Donkey in second hand shop for £4.00! Kieron has a fantastic eye for good finds and bargains.

He also has a furniture pervert for a brother, whose favourite piece of furniture happens to be the Isokon mark 2 Penguin Donkey (sorry Tomoko). After about two years of me saying to him every day “You might as well let me have that”. He let me have it, but not before he’d made an exact cardboard and gum tape replica of it, for me, for a joke.

I have recreated Kieron’s cardboard version, using the data from the original Ernest Race model, in order to create a net that can be cut on a three-axis plotter cutter from two sheets of 3mm corrugated cardboard. I wonder what changing the materials and manufacturing process of a truly classic piece of furniture would mean in terms of it’s perceived value, worth and cost?

I love the idea of it becoming a kind of Blue Peter start up kit for those saving for a proper one.