Christmas Gift Guide 2012 Archives - Page 2 of 2

When Sculpture Meets Sound | The iPhone Gramaphone

As you probably all know by now, I am a big fan of music. I’ve played the violin since I was two and have been a singer/songwriter for most of my life, so my ears have been tuned to decipher the delicate details that make a recording special. That’s why when my love of good design and my love of music combine, I get really, really excited.

Remember a few weeks ago when I shared the beautiful, Italian-designed iPhone Megaphone? The gorgeous ceramic sculpture’s simple, organic shape had us all swooning. But it’s hard {if not impossible} to find in Canada and the US, and shipping from Italy… Well, it just might not get here for Christmas!

I must confess that I’m not particularly fond of “substitutes.” I’ve always been a “real thing” kind of girl. But the wonderful news is that today’s design find is in fact no substitute at all. It’s the real thing, and the story behind it will no doubt win you over just as it has me.

Friends, meet the iPhone Gramaphone.

Not only is this a beautiful product, the story behind it is wonderful. Here’s just a bit of the lovely tale of the man behind the sculpture and sound.

Sometimes serendipity succeeds where school falls short. Matt Richmond could have traveled any one of several roads. His passion for the saxophone might have led to a career on stage, had the act of studying music not taken the fun out of playing his instrument. After shifting his focus to microbiology, he found that hours spend in the library overshadowed his love for tinkering in the lab. And finally, while industrial design tapped into his life-long desire to know how things work – “Since I was a kind, the first thing I’d do when I got something new was to take it apart” – his graduate studies deconstructing toasters and hair dryers proved not nearly as interesting as the modern furniture he began collecting on the side.

So ultimately, Matt left school and devoted himself to furniture design. But it wasn’t until he walked into an antique store near San Francisco that all of his interests and aptitudes finally – and brilliantly – converged.

“I found this old Victrola horn that had a shape I really loved and I thought, ‘How cool would it be if I could use this with my phone?’ I held up my phone to the opening on the speaker, and I could immediately tell it was something that would work.”

He crafted the base for that first horn – a clean-lined piece of hardwood, carved with a slot for his phone, a hole for the horn, and an internal channel to conduct sound from one to the other, with no plug or battery required. The result was elegantly simple, and amazingly functional – a witty juxtaposition of vintage and modern technology that brought something new to each. A sculpture that made music.

Everyone who saw the original wanted one of their own. Soon, by virtue of word of mouth and the Internet, Matt had more orders than he could possibly fill. After handcrafting nearly a hundred, Matt refined the design and determined exactly the combination of horn shape and wood type that works best, and that would allow him to replicated it on a larger scale.

{words by Laura Cavaluzzo}

Enter Restoration Hardware, the iconic home furnishings purveyor who will make all your Gramaphone Christmas wishes come true by bringing Matt’s brilliant design to market on a larger scale. Based on that very first horn that Matt found in an East Bay antique store {a Magnavox metal speaker from the 20’s} the base is crafted from solid walnut and the metal horn offers bright, balanced, full-range sonics. The horn is of course directional, so you can keep the sound subtle and in the background or point it into a corner and fill the entire room with music.

“There’s something about listening to a record on an old phonograph,” says Matt, “it doesn’t have the fidelity of a CD or MP3, but it evokes a feeling. It’s about eliciting a feeling.”

Matt’s story is for all of us late bloomers. It’s for those of us who have taken a winding path to finding ourselves. It’s a reminder to keep dreaming and creating and inventing and trying. And his beautifully designed product is for all the audiophiles on our Christmas lists this year. Available in an iPad version as well, my guess is it will be the most talked-about gift under the tree.

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