The slow food movement is all about appreciating the process of cooking, so perhaps we can call this the slow stool movement? This enthusiastic soul yanked down some lumber and gnawed it into shape with his teeth to see if he could build himself a seat without any tools.
Many a modern man has sat and thought to himself "what earthly use would I be if I was transported back in time?" I mean, for my part, I'm pretty handy with a camera, I can type at a competent pace and find my way around a directory structure in MS-DOS. Put me in a survival situation and I would bring nothing but shame on my ancestors.
Nik Bentel seems to feel the same way, so he's doing some kind of art project to see just how much he can achieve without the gigantic weight of human technology behind him.
In step one, he decided to build a stool using nothing but his own body (and a fair bit of his dad's woodworking knowledge) to get the job done. That meant literally pushing and pulling down dead trees to harvest wood, and then using the hardest bits of his body he could find (teeth and nails; it was cold when he was attempting this) to chew, gnaw and whittle the wood into shapes that would fit together without any fasteners.
Three days of bleeding gums and splintered fingertips later, Bentel finished, becoming the world's pre-eminent stool chewer in the process. That's going to take some explaining in your CV, Nik.
She's a wobbly old stool, mind you. I don't think Bentel's gonna kick off any new design trends with this work, although it does have a certain sort of charming Flintstones aesthetic going on. Watch a video below (warning: occasional course language), or heck, just scroll straight down to the comments section to drop a few nuggets of stool humor on us. Your choice!
Source: All Purpose Nik
