Forming Relationships — Building One’s Own Tool as a Holistic Practice
Artisanal knife and spoon making through embodied circular design
Knives are among the oldest tools of humankind, dating to around 2.6 million years ago. Alongside fire, they mark the beginning of our technological and cultural becoming. Emerging from early gestures of shaping, scraping, cutting, and scooping, the knife shares deep functional roots with another primal, 20,000-year-old utensil, the spoon.
These simple extensions of the hand arose to meet the basic needs of transforming and sustaining life. This course opens up a dialogue with human origins — with the elemental forces that mediate change: fire, water, earth, air, and the human hand.
Crafting a knife articulates division, edge, and intention, requiring an engagement with force, precision, and control. Crafting a spoon foregrounds containment rather than division, emphasizing support, transfer, and proximity to the body. Crafting these tools will embed you in a relationship to self, to place, to material, to the long lineage of tools that have shaped how humans live, work, cook, hunt, care, and share.
This course frames tool-making not only as forging or carving, but as forming: an act of arranging materials, gestures, techniques, stories, and places into a coherent whole. Forging speaks to intensity, heat, force, and transformation — especially in steel and blade. Forming opens the field toward pattern, relation, rhythm, and balance — allowing knife and spoon, fire and wood, cutting and holding to coexist within one systemic practice, much as they have coexisted since the earliest human toolkits.
From analogy to ontology — the Knife as metaphor and teacher
A knife is not only a tool; it is a metaphor for discernment — the capacity to cut through confusion, to separate, to clarify, to reveal form within the raw. To build one’s own knife is to reclaim the means of shaping the world. It is a systemic act: shaping the tool that will shape many other actions and decisions.
Forging the knife is an engagement with hardness, resistance, and irreversibility. Steel remembers heat and force. It demands attention and decisiveness. In this sense, forging is an education in commitment: once a cut is made, it cannot be undone.
From cutting to containing — the spoon as a companion tool
Wooden spoon carving shapes through patience, grain, and listening. It introduces a softer, slower, but no less precise mode of composing material — one oriented toward nourishment, containment, caring, and sharing.
Here, forming becomes explicit: the bowl balances volume and thickness; the handle follows the hand while maintaining grain continuity. The spoon teaches continuity rather than separation, flow rather than incision.
Knife and spoon together form a relational pair — two gestures of human life held in productive tension, rooted in a shared origin yet unfolding into complementary ways of engaging the world.
Course structure
Virtual preparatory design phase
Session 1:
Forming relationships:
Introduction to the philosophy and ontology of tools — Why make your own knife and spoon?
Knife and spoon as ancient, complementary gestures: cutting and holding, discernment and care.
Session 2:
Design ideation:
blade geometry, 3D modelling, steel selection for pre-ordering, sketching, prototyping/mockuping, handle ergonomics, sheath; spoon morphology and material choice.
Place-based material sourcing and on-site camping:
preparing for fieldwork and encounters with landscape and practice.
On-site immersive phase
• Arrival Day
Knife path: evening arrival and orientation, natural camping setting; introduction to place; welcoming dinner
• Day 1
Knife path:
- philosophical and personal grounding; knives and forming tools in use, blade and its functional aesthetic; materials and tools familiarization
- transforming recycled, new knifesteel, and old tools-steel into new blades; learning tempering, shaping, hardening in the furnace with 1200°C,
Social evening around dinner.
• Day 2
Knife path: morning blade treatment, sharpening, refining blade ergonomics, rockwell (hardness) testing
Spoon path: noon arrival, natural camping setting
Knife and Spoon path: joint lunch; afternoon Systemic Cycles “materials collection and connection to place”:
Forest walk/bike ride; introduction: knife–spoon lineage, their shapes and functional aesthetics; meeting trees and their types of wood; touching and macro-exampining cell structures of dried local mountain wood types; dialogue with craftspeople, farmers, and landscapes; reflecting on material stories and lived practices; material selection and workshop preparation.
Social evening around dinner.
• Day 3
Parallel crafting paths
Knife path: shaping wooden handles, oiling, finishing for use
Spoon path: browsing and selecting the spoon prototype, rough-cut and start of carving
• Day 4
Parallel crafting paths
Knife path: crafting leather sheaths with hemp yarn, or vegan Paulownia wood sheaths with fish protein glues and magnet holders.
Spoon path: carving wooden spoons; working with grain, bowl geometry, and ergonomics; sanding, polishing, oiling, finishing for food use.
Finishing, Reflection
Newly crafted tools exhibition. Shared dinner at the campus fireplace - using your own tools. Group reflection on the course learnings, tools ontology, systemic cycles, and embodied experiences
• Departure day
Knife and Spoon path: morning departure
Dates and places
• Virtual phase
Two virtual theory and preparatory meetings: 21.07 and 28.07.2026.
• On-site immersive phase
In order to ensure adequate space, focus, and learning conditions, the virtual group will be divided into two subgroups. Please choose one of the selected paths (Knife or Spoon) and a convenient date:
Subgroup 1
Knife path: 3-8.08.2026
Spoon path: 5-8.08.2026
Group 2
Knife path: 24-29.08.2026
Spoon path: 26-29.08.2026
Location: MonViso Institute, Serre Lamboi, 12030 Ostana, Italy:
Meet the guides for Forming Relations and Tool Crafting:
Tobias Luthe, MVI Founding Director, ETH DRRS Program Director, Systemic Cycles Co-founder
Sylwia Orczykowska, ETH DRRS Communication and Art Designer, Art Now Founder
For whom?
Are you into handcraft? Do you have a favor for quality tools? Are you curious about materials and egineering techniques? Do you appreciate fresh mountain climate in hot summers? Are you curious to explore philosophies of the past, present, and future? Are you up for self-reflection and inner relation building? Would you even be open for coming with your partner or friend, and metaphorically form your relations via the embodied narration of tool making and their use in place?
Accomodation
You will be hosted in comfortable, single sleeping, stand-tall tents, with a mattress, chair and table, on a wooden platform in the "Essenza Lamboi Camp", our "glamorous camping" translation at the MVI Campus Serre Lamboi forest with a mountain view. Dry toilets and outdoor showers are a delight to use in summer, while a "normal" bathroom is nearby to use as well.
DRRS elective?
Yes, counting for 2 ECTS if pre-conditioned MOOC#1 has been finished and if accompanied by a written-graphical report with a potential selection as a DRRS blog publication, plus your personal learning reflection, to be submitted after the course.
Pricing
Regular course price, knife path - 1600 €
Regular course price, spoon path - 1400 €
The price difference reflects slight variations in the duration of the knife and spoon paths, the types of tools used, and the materials involved
Accommodation (glamping), bike rental (in case of Systemic Cycles by bike), and taxi pickup are included in the price.
Additional private costs: snacks, drinks.
Required preconditions
Please apply by mail apply@monviso-institute.org till 15 April, 2026 with:
– a short statement of motivation,
– a brief résumé of your education and work experience,
– your age,
– proof of ETH DRRS MOOC#1 participation for the DRRS alumni conditions,
- proof of accident insurance,
– your expectations.
Please note that the number of seats is limited. Final participants will be selected based on a statement of motivation and fulfillment of the required preconditions.