Designer Toby Wong and I went on our own sightseeing tour of our old home town Toronto. We showed each other our favorites haunts, one of which is Honest Ed's, a shopping extravaganza like no other. We were mainly interested in items that we scratched our heads over, and who, where and how these objects are designed. How is it that someone says I want to produce a small figurine made of a girl with a lollipop and dog by her side, made of porcelain, dipped in a chrome-like glaze and sold for .25 cents? Who are the designers behind a wall clock that has a three dimensional dolphin scene and an accompanying water sound track? Who points his finger to a pile of decals and says this is the pattern to go on the wing of a wierd bug of a picture frame? And why this one? Following the trail, one day I will finish what we started in Honest Ed's, for Toby, and find the source and shake the hand of the person responsible. This is not in pursuit of making fun of this process, but taking interest in a majority of objects on supermarket shelves, who is the creative behind them, why so many are sold and loved by somebody.
photographs, Cynthia Hathaway, 2009
