Brass Class

Louis Sullivan was the pioneering American architect of the Chicago “Prairie School” style which embraced his famous tenet “form follows function”.  Sullivan’s pupil, Frank Lloyd Wright, went on to modify the sentiment as “form and function are one”. Contemporary hardware designer Felix Ure’s uniquely puzzling metalwork takes cues from this classic idea. There’s more than just a beautiful aesthetic at play. His newest design, “Piston”, is a perfect example. Like all of Ure’s designs, it is elegantly simple in form, with just a few interesting details to offset the nearly solid brushed brass cylinder.

From Felix: “In general I'm inspired by understanding mechanisms that I encounter in day to day life. Every mechanism in the piston puzzle is based on ideas that I've had in my head since I started designing puzzles 3 years ago. I have no idea where they came from originally, but Piston is a rather neat combination of multiple ideas that I'd never successfully incorporated into a puzzle before. I actually made 2 prototypes previously, each of which was essentially half of the piston puzzle, and I figured out that I could combine both puzzles into one mega-puzzle.”

Piston could also be a masterclass in real world production challenges, for anyone interested in making their own creations come to life. “Design-wise, Piston went through more changes and prototypes than anything else I've designed. The tight interaction between all different parts means that a small tweak … causes every single other part to be tweaked as well. Production-wise, Piston is made up of 26 components from an array of different manufacturers, so a delay on one of them delays everything else. It was meant to be released 5 months ago, but obviously that didn't happen! The scale of making 500 complex puzzles in one go is also pretty daunting - for example a load of components arrived with the same scratch in them which needed sanding out, so doing that 500 times writes off about 2 days. It was the same story with a particular hole that needed re-drilling. Tiny tasks turn into huge delays when you need to repeat everything 500 times without losing your mind.”

Felix has produced a beautiful puzzle which will give you a serious workout in more ways than one. Like most Ure creations it is quite heavy, so almost forces you to take things in stages while your hands and forearms take a break. It’s also pleasantly confusing in a good way, making it fairly obvious what steps you may be trying to achieve but not making it easy to accomplish them. The goal of retrieving a brass ball gives you something to work towards while exploring the object, and also means there are hidden chambers inside, making this the best sort of puzzle, a puzzle box! It’s full of surprises, tools to discover, and an unusual objective, all wrapped into an elegant and artistic conversation piece – Piston defies resistin’.

The Piston puzzle gave me some angst while attempting to solve it so I’m “taking the piss”, as my British friends say, with this toast. I’ve had a little vial of rare juice waiting to use in something special, and the time has come. When unexpectedly startled, the American Woodhouse toad will pee in self defense. Pick one up, for example, and be prepared to be saturated in toxic toileting. Some toads also secrete toxins or deadly poisons through their skin. These rare secretions, from just the right amphibian and harvested in just the right moonlight, may also be hallucinogenic. Naturalist toad hunter Robert Yarger procured an entire vial of this precious piss and I am now the proud proprietor. I’ve used a few drops of his precious “Startled Toad Juice”, which tastes quite like salted preserved lemon extract, in this potion.

Taking my cues from the Prairie School of form and function I surmised that the Piston Cocktail should appear to have been. Hmmm? Wait for it, read that again, and … there you go. This is a gin based drink with ties to the martini and the Last Word using appropriately hued components: the distinctly herbal French aperitif Suze, the mildly bitter Italian aperitivo Cocchi Americano, and an irreverent hint of sweetness in the form of Giffard’s banana liqueur. Adding a pinch of salt to cocktails is also a common trick to enhance the flavors, and the salty lemon Toad Juice is a nice touch here. Whether you’re feeling pissed, taking the piss or just want to get pissed, I’ve got your drink right here. Cheers!

The Piston Cocktail

1 ½ oz gin

¾ oz Suze

½ oz Banana liqueur

½ oz Cocchi Americano

barspoon preserved lemon extract

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a favorite glass. Garnish with a thin stream of lemon peel.

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