Project Timespan
A few weeks in Spring 2023
Inspiration
For better for worse, I have spent a lot of time in school. There were many subjects that I really enjoyed and some I did not; that being said, I think I did fairly well in most of them, thank goodness. If there was one subject in which my knowledge is severely lacking, it would be philosophy. Fortunately, my significant other majored in philosophy, so when it came to making a project based on philosophers, she did the heavy lifting.
This project was made for a Valentine’s Day gift, but it turns out that the recipient contributed greatly to the entire process from start to finish. In this post, I will go over the technical aspects of constructing these coasters, along with touching upon the quotes themselves if only to make a fool of myself in exposing my lack of philosophical understanding!
Materials
– Maple board (soft maple, ~16 mm in thickness)
– Epoxy resin with pigments
– Acrylic paints/ paint brushes
– Hobbyist CNC router, random orbital sander
– Finish: polyurethane
Coaster Design
It took much sleuthing to find a set of designs that fit the bill. Essentially, I went through various Google searches with terms such as “vector art,” “philosophy designs,” or “philosopher busts” in an attempt to find a simple clean, yet bold set of art.
Fortunately, I came across the work of a philosophy professor from Singapore, John Holbo.
He has a few different websites, and in addition to his personal one, he also runs a shop on the online marketplace Redbubble and a website dedicated to philosophic caricatures.
It was this latter site in which I struck gold, and together we quickly selected a set of seven philosophers to use; Jianing was quite opinionated on the ones she wanted, and there was one more, Heidegger, for whom there was no design made. Thus, I scoured the internet yet again to find a suitable alternative – a design by artist Ion Andrei Puican.
With the designs in place, now it was time to clean them up. It was a straightforward process to convert these sharp-lined caricatures into vector format, and then I imported the .svg files into Fusion 360 for further processing. Namely, I wanted to turn the design from a torso and face to more of a classic bust, essentially trimming off anything below the top of a tie.
I had a beautiful stock of 16 mm soft maple at hand, and I wanted to add some color as contrast. My idea was to have each philosopher bust centered within the circular coaster, with a colored ring of epoxy for the border. Within the ring would be a quotation with which the philosopher would be associated -the exact quotation would be chosen by Jianing.
To accomplish this design, I needed to engrave in a few steps. First, I would route out the circular groove along the outer border, after which I would pour epoxy resin (mixed with a suitable pigment for color) to fill in the ring. I marked the exact center of each coaster block so that I could remove the wood for pouring the epoxy resign. After the epoxy had dried, then I would be able to go back and engrave the text and design.
I decided to add the name of the philosopher below their design, and also added in their year of birth and year of passing to the left and right of their design, respectively.
After this comes the black lining step when the surface is coated with black paint. It doesn’t matter much if one strays out of the lines, as next a random orbital sander is used to sand down the epoxy flush. Only the black paint within the text or design remains.
Plato
“If anything else is beautiful besides beauty itself, it is beautiful on account of nothing else than because it partakes of beauty itself.”
I know little of Plato besides that he was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle in a 1-2-3 punch of philosophic heavyweights, and that he dabble in some Theory of Forms business.
With regards to the coaster design, this was the first of the set that I made, and that the engraved quote turned out so beautifully only adds to the allure of the quotation itself. I did mess up on the engraving of his mouth, and a discerning critic can see I had to patch the defect. I chose a purple ring given its connection to the classical era.
Descartes
“Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).”
Perhaps the most famous of all philosophical quotes, cogito ergo sum is a fundamental principle of Descartes’ philosophy, a so-called self-evident truth.
Given the brevity of the statement, I thought it best to repeat it in a cyclical manner, alternating between Latin and Engish, until it filled the whole of the outer ring.
The engraving of the outer text was rather uneven, likely due to slight variance in the thickness of the wood itself. As I did not have access to a planer, I used the wood as I obtained it from the shop!
Kant
“Thoughts without contents are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.”
Kant is regarded by many as the father of modern Western Philosophy and a central figure in the Enlightenment movement.
As with the Descartes coaster, this one also ended with rather heavy-handed text. The design of Kant himself is somewhat odd and evokes an image of a squid of sorts, but the coaster turned out well enough in the end.
Hegel
“Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.”
I know very little about Hegel, nor much of anything about his contemporary German philosophers. The quote above does little to lead me to an understanding!
I chose orange for no particular reason, but the color pops out nicely. Once again, the selected quote only barely fit the ring after sizing down the font.
Schopenhauer
“The World as Will. The World as Representation.
Yet another German philosopher of whom I barely know anything about, Schopenhauer’s most famous work is entitled “The World as Will and Representation.”
I thought I’d be clever with this coaster design as it can be read forwards and backwards. If I were to change it up, it would be to increase the text of “The World” to highlight its importance while diminishing the filler word “as.”
Heidegger
“The future is not later than having been, and having-been is not earlier than the present.”
Writing up this project post around the time of the 2024 Presidential Election, I can’t help but be reminded of the quote by Democratic Nominee Kamala Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been.” Now, Heidegger quote is translated from German, of course, and the syntax is only superficial in resemblance, but the similarity does make me chuckle.
The Heidegger coaster is the only one from a design not by JHoldo. Most notably, the face is not as symmetric, and he does lack the deep facial creases found on those of the other designs, but still Heidegger slots in nicely when viewing the entire collection.
Freud
“Life is a circuitous route to death.”
Freud may be one of the more famous names on this list, no doubt due to countless high schoolers or college students learning about psychoanalysis or the Oedipus complex.
The trick aspect of this design was the glasses which were annoying to route out on the CNC. I chose to design a mirrored quote in which the only words not duplicated are “Life” and “Death.”
Beauvoir
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
Simone de Beauvoir is the last on the project list as well as the only female of the eight. As it so happens, she did not consider herself a philosopher, and neither was she viewed as one by academia within her lifetime.
As with the Freud design, the Beauvoir coaster also uses a form of symmetry in text, though it isn’t a perfect mirror. In hindsight, it may have been neater to combine both “ones” at the start of the quote into an ambigram of sorts. I tried exploring online ambigrams for “woman,” but didn’t come up with an aesthetically satisfactory solution.
Finishing Touches
At first I wanted to call it more or less complete after the black lining process, but Jianing thought the coasters would look even better with added color. She was completely right, as the color makes each coaster come alive and further distinguishes the designs. For each philosopher, I selected a color that would match the outer ring of the respective coaster.
All coasters were sanded to 240 or 320 grit before the painting step, and after all was said and done, I sprayed the coasters with several coats of polyurethane for protection, shine, and to bright out the warmth of the maple.
Lessons Learned & Improvements
This was one of my favorite projects to date, as tag-team team ideas allow for ping-pong creativity. Maple was an excellent wood to use, as it contrasts so nicely with the pigmented epoxy and acrylics.
Reflection
I have had many projects involving custom coasters (Wedding Coasters | Wooden Coasters | Yet More Coasters), and I feel somewhat burnt out when it comes to coaster projects… but I say that now, perhaps there will be another coaster series idea that will pique my interest!