Core77

Gabriel Hargrove, a designer from Chicago, Illinois, is working on an ongoing series entitled Objects of the Rural Vernacular, where he re-encapsulates objects, customs and traditions from American rural environments.

For example, the Libertarian Raccoon Trap, based loosely on Daniel Beard's American Handy Book for Boys, "reminds users of the agency available to them through objects," helping the secret libertarian in all of us capture nuisance animals ourselves, without harming them. This circumvents city ordinances that "impede the non-professional's resolution to a pest problem."

A couple pages from the American Handy Book for Boys

From Gabriel:

The trap construction is based loosely on plans depicted in Daniel Beard's American Handy Book for Boys. The materials used such as a lumber and found objects are more appropriate to the urban environment than those described in the book. The resources Beard calls for are more challenging to procure and in some cases illegal to harvest in a city. Instead joined and planed lumber, hardware store screws, and an outdated VCR replace what might only be found in a public park.

Other objects in this fantastic series include Porcelain Milk Jugs and the Ethanol Still, both "Objects for Whiskey Bootlegging and Ethanol Farming." The containers (above), imitating the form of plastic milk jug, allow the user to bottle spirits without the harmful leaching of plastics, while still "affording discretion." Each one is marked with one, two or three X's, denoting the number of distillations the ethanol has undergone.

Finally, the Ethanol Still, used in conjunction with the Porcelain Milk Jugs, can produce either moonshiine or ethyl alcohol fuel—this ambiguousness sidesteps some of the legal issues surrounding the production of libations. The still is modeled after Appalachian copper stills, which are made by hand with traditional metalsmithing techniques.

More photos of all projects follow.