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I am Brazilian and live in Vitória, a seaside city located about 400 km north of Rio de Janeiro. I am 77 years old and have been married to Carol for 52 years. We have 5 children and 8 grandchildren. I was an athlete in my youth and have bean writing columns for a local newspaper.
I am a production engineer who believes in rationality and common sense. For many years I was a university professor and worked in public agencies in the areas of education management and support for science and technological development. In the early 1990s I created an innovative consulting company specialized in industrial production management.
I am a convinced spoonmaker. After achieving many important things in different areas over more than 40 years, I love being identified here in my city as being “that man who makes spoons”.
I have been making bamboo spoons for exactly 30 years, using only hand tools. I believe I have made more than 5,500 pieces with bamboo, all different from each other. Hundreds of them were damaged by bamboo borers, insects that really like to eat bamboo. More than a thousand were made and given as gifts. The rest are stored in large boxes next to my workbench.
I love making a spoon for someone. It’s a great opportunity to spend hours with them in my thoughts and then know that they remember me when they use the gift.
Not mixing money with spoons was a very important decision that I made right at the beginning of this kind of game. I like to say that this freed me from the evils of money and that it has produced joy, wonderful encounters and unimaginable outcomes.
After a heart attack at the age of 46, I had to suspend all my professional activities and pay extra attention to my health and self-esteem, which had been greatly impacted by the recklessness of smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day.
The first time I plucked up the courage to go to a good friend’s farm, 50 km from my home, I had a life-changing experience: I was enchanted by bamboo fibers, something I had never seen before.
When I cut a piece of wood with my Swiss army knife, I noticed that, depending on the cut, whether lengthwise, from the top or at an angle, the fibers appeared as thin, parallel dark lines, as small dots or as ellipses.
Alone on the porch, I spent a long time observing that kind of secret that I had just discovered, after years of using bamboo to make cages and fishing rods. To this day, I keep that kind of talisman in a safe place on my workbench.
With no prospects of returning to the world of work, due to my absolute lack of physical fitness, I took advantage of the time available to practice my manual skills. I started with my favorite sickle, trying to hit successive blows in the same spot on one of the bamboo sticks I had brought from the farm.
It took me a few days to master the movements, calibrate my aim and be able to hit the desired spot. A modest skill, but enough to make me feel capable of accomplishing such a feat.
Excited, I began to try to create shapes, thinning strips of bamboo. Making a handle was easy, but getting a rounded shape with a sickle was not so much. The alternative was to use the kitchen knives, which I sharpened as if I were peeling oranges. The results were encouraging and the shapes of a large spoon gradually emerged, generating satisfaction with each step.
I tried to show Carol the result of my entire afternoon’s effort: a rough and poorly finished spoon. She was happy and supportive, and she liked the object, but above all, she liked seeing her husband’s satisfied face. In fact, at that moment, I felt like an expert spoon maker. In truth, I hadn’t felt so powerful in a long time.
The next day, the work picked up pace. Skilled and trained as I was, I chose a piece of bamboo and set out on a new adventure. It was relatively easy to create another shape made up of a handle and a ladle, which resembled a large spoon.
The challenges I faced were: how to improve the shapes, even out the surfaces and perfect the corners. That’s when I remembered the little knife with two rounded blades that my father-in-law used to cut leather. By allowing me to remove small amounts of wood, it showed me a way to achieve a good end result: trying to obtain small cumulative gains, even if making small mistakes throughout the process. It worked so well that it became one of the main characteristics of the work method I adopted.
With that, the production of spoons gained an intense pace, exploiting what I had to spare: willingness, idle time and a pleasant space on the side porch of the house. This, in addition to a certain pride in seeing bamboo slivers everywhere, true witnesses to the satisfaction of having made something with my hands.
Disappointment came soon after, when I realized that, as they dried, the shapes and finish of the pieces, all made with still-damp bamboo, lost precision and beauty, to the point that some of them were disfigured.
A strategic resource in Eastern countries, bamboo has been gaining the attention of architects, craftsmen, artists and builders. Resistance, durability, hardness, beauty and flexibility are some of its characteristics. Its structure, composed of hollow segments limited by nodes, of varying thicknesses, sizes and diameters in each type of plant, allows for very diverse uses.
The finest fibers are in greater quantity near the bark, covered by a layer of very resistant and waterproof material, which can shine as if it were varnished. The inner part of the segment is coated with a matte layer.
There is an abundance of bamboo here in Brazil. I always take my sickle when I travel, in the hope of finding some interesting ones to bring home. Experience recommends cutting them during the New Moon, when the canes are free of borers.
The specificities of each piece of bamboo – size, thickness, curvature, bark conditions, etc. – are understood as opportunities and objective limitations, which challenge my ability to obtain a piece that pleases me, with the tools that are available. The first step is to decide which side the ladle will be on, a decisive choice.
I know that some people are strongly attracted to knives, but I have never heard of anyone being interested in forks. Knives, although functional and beautiful, are aggressive and dangerous objects. The fact is that I have made a few small knives and only three forks.
Spoons are friendly objects with many uses. Jewelry design professor Herman Jünger, owner of a magnificent collection of them, believed that the spoon – whether it be a bark, a leaf, or a shell used to put food in the mouth – was the first object that human beings had contact with in life.
And that this could explain the enchantment that some people have for them. I have seen people shocked by a specific spoon, displayed among many others.
In general, every spoon is made up of two interconnected parts: a ladle and a handle. Each of these can have a variety of shapes, but as they are part of the same piece, they must ensure that the whole is functional and harmonious.
The handle can be any length and its design can be rounded or edged, of a single thickness or varying degrees of thickness. It can be straight or curved, rigid or flexible, and so on. Its corners can be sharp or rounded and have a smooth finish or not. Handles should preferably offer comfort and firmness to the user.
The ladle can also come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from the flattest ones, typical of spatulas, to the most concave ones. Each one must be suitable for its uses, in the kitchen and on the table, or in work and leisure environments. Its shapes, surfaces and edges must be pleasant to the touch and, necessarily, efficient for collecting, transporting and disposing of liquid, pasty and firm substances.
The connection between the handle and the ladle can also have any shape, including being just an extension of one of the parts.
After so many years, I find it relatively easy to make a spoon. In theory, all you have to do is choose a piece of bamboo and start taking smaller and smaller pieces of wood, always looking for interesting shapes. Completely free from the imposition of standards and models, I understood that any shape can be an attractive and intriguing option.
For all these reasons, the universe of possibilities for creating a spoon that works well and that someone likes is practically limitless.
I learned that tools were created by our ancestors to make their lives easier and to increase their ability to do things with their own hands. I imagine that breaking, splitting, cutting, drilling, rolling are examples of activities that motivated the creation of clubs, blades, levers…
I like to believe that I invented one of them, to create flat and rounded shapes and surfaces. After trying unsuccessfully to do this with my rusty rasp, I had the idea of rolling 80-grit sandpaper around a rigid tube, in search of flat and rounded surfaces. To achieve good finishes, I assembled fine sandpaper into flexible tubes. It also worked. The results appeared immediately.
On my workbench I keep tubes of colored sandpaper, of different grain sizes, ready to be used. They make a beautiful scene.
To obtain the bamboo strips and to create a basic shape, I always use a small short-handled sickle that I received from an old coconut seller in 1977, in the Northeast of Brazil. To carve the concave surface of the shell, I use several instruments: a wonderful gouge that was given to me by a craftsman; two powerful tools with large curved blades that I received from a gentleman in Munich, to whom I owe a lot; a small knife with a rounded blade that a cutler friend made for me; and recently I happily started using a kind of ergonomic pocket knife that a friend brought from the south of Brazil. I always remember these people when I’m sharpening each one of them.
At first I had a lot of difficulty finding tools to extract small chips from the wood. It was in Paris, in 1995, that I managed to buy my first long-handled, short-bladed knives, which were very useful for years. With their blades already well worn and their handles wrapped in leather, they sit on the bench, like witnesses, ready to be used. In Vienna, I bought refined sharpening stones and learned about very fine sandpaper applied to foam. To finish the spoons, I also use a tool I used when I was a boy: flat, rounded pieces of glass. By removing very fine laminated shavings, they provide a perfect view of the bamboo fibers. It is a very enjoyable task.
I discovered, by accident, that shine can also be obtained by compression, by rubbing the surfaces of a piece with a piece of very hard bamboo that I received from a Japanese artisan.
Mastering the potential and limitations of each tool increases its use and reduces the risk of making mistakes. Skill, detachment, enchantment, control, persistence, repetition, experimentation and boldness are vital to obtain good results and, most importantly, to free the mind to conduct the creative process and to think about life.
A long time ago, I learned that human beings are powerful identifiers of defects, something that is innate. If milk is sour, the baby will not swallow it.
I also discovered that a visible defect acts as a powerful inhibitor of sincere compliments. Therefore, I understood that it would be worthwhile to eliminate each of the defects before anyone finds them.
To this end, I adopted a production method consisting of two types of complementary activities, carried out in successive cycles until the piece is ready and finished: identifying what is inadequate (crooked, ugly, weird, rough, asymmetrical…) and then trying to correct what is still not acceptable.
Once the imperfection has been corrected, it is time to identify the next defect to be addressed and so on, until it is no longer possible to locate what is inadequate. The piece will be considered ready when it is free of identifiable defects.
I have learned, in practice, that imperfections in shapes and finishes gradually become less noticeable, requiring greater skill to locate them. Since I do not use any type of drawing or design tools – pencils, rulers, compasses, calipers, etc. – I have tried to use powerful resources that I have collected over time, almost all of which are within reach of those who work with their hands.
The ones I use most are: a dark background, which highlights imperfections on the perimeter of the piece; a transverse light, which highlights unevenness and imperfections on surfaces; the tip of the index finger, which is a powerful locator of smoothness and roughness on surfaces and corners. Aiming with only one eye allows you to identify imperfections in the linearity of the handle.
Holding a piece in your hands allows you to assess whether it is balanced and comfortable to hold. Looking at a piece from a distance helps you check whether its parts are visually in harmony. The sounds produced by the tools can indicate the roughness of the surfaces. Verifying that the fibers are already intact, parallel and equidistant is a guarantee that the surface is perfectly flat.
I understood that identifying defects and inadequacies is the most strategic of all the operations I perform when making spoons. As a production engineer, I believe that this method can be adopted in many types of processes, in search of better results.
I chose not to use any type of varnish or paint to decorate and beautify the spoons I make, nor any type of poison or insecticide to protect them against bamboo borers.
I usually make spoons alone in front of my workbench, at the beginning of the day, and also on the cool balcony of our house, walking on the beach in search of health, on park benches and anywhere else where I can drop bamboo shavings to collect them later.
In the hope of finding favorable conditions to work, I always take bamboo and small tools with me when I travel. I like to leave the spoons as gifts for those who have been nearby.
I see many people on the internet cutting wood, alone or in groups, and also showing what they have made, always with a smile of satisfaction. As far as I know, there are few people who make spoons here in Brazil. But whenever I offer workshops, the vacancies fill up quickly.
Writing the book “Viva a Produção Prazerosa” (Long Live the Pleasant Production) during the pandemic, about my experiences with spoon production, was a great opportunity to review facts and developments, some of which were surprising. With 260 pages and illustrated with 240 photographs, it records much of what happened up until 2020. The launches have been popular and festive.
The spoons have already been exhibited in several Brazilian cities, including Brasília, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. At the Vale Museum in Vitória, we set up a panel with 1,300 spoons.
In Europe, they have already been shown at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna, at the Gewerbemuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland, and also in galleries in Munich, Hockenheim and Frankfurt.
I believe that the main demonstration of the enchantment with spoons is the book “Alvaro Abreu – Bamboo”, made and financed by the renowned photographer Hans Hansen, from Hamburg, to celebrate his 50-year career. He published it 10 years after being moved by them at Exempla, an international craft fair in Munich. The book is composed of 20 photographs in 100x23cm format, presenting sets of truly size spoons and trilingual texts by six renowned professionals.
The publication was edited by Professor Florian Hufnagl, director of Die Neue Sammlung – International Design Museum, whose collection includes a panel with 52 thin spoons, unanimously chosen by its curators during Exempla.
I only met Hans Hansen in person when he came to Brazil in 2012 for the launch of his book, at the opening of the exhibition of his photos and my spoons, which we organized at the Museu da Casa Brasileira in São Paulo.
Making spoons for pure pleasure has brought much joy to me and also to my family and friends who record, promote, edit publications, set up exhibitions, organize workshops and everything else. We are all always imbued with the satisfaction of achieving and the pleasure of celebrating success.
In conclusion, I would like to record here what I understand to be a truth, which I learned and I have always defended: doing things well is very worthwhile.
Alvaro Abreu
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One Response
Alvaro’s work is amazing.
Each piece is simple and curious. Although when you have a group together the spoons get another level of magic! Congratulations to Spoon Crank for the article.