Italiano 
The moment it all begins is a magical one. And we often believe that ideas spring up out of nowhere, at such times, as randomly as if they’d come from outer space.
It can feel like the more we look for ideas the slower they are to come up. But perhaps this is simply a truism because, as Jeremy Baines, founder of TAVAT, has told us, behind every good idea there are simply curious people wanting to find out more and experiment. Behind every good idea lies a profound interest in the real world.
The meeting
Like all the best adventures, the TAVAT adventure began with a meeting. A meeting between an eyewear salesman and a Pasadena University design professor.
‘At the outset I worked as an eyewear salesman. I dealt with large firms, exceptional brands’, Jeremy told us. ‘And this was when I made friends with Norman [Schureman], professor of product design at ArtCenter College of Design».
A great friendship was born which lives on in Jeremy’s memory, despite Norman’s premature death. ‘He was a fantastic person. Everything he designed had a function and a clear image. Norman enjoyed designing glasses and saw these as one of design’s most complex challenges.’
ArtCenter is a sort of design hub with dozens of specialisation courses. An artistic and cultural melting pot, a crucible of all forms of art. Some of the greatest design teachers and talents have passed through it over the years. ‘It is an incredible place’, says Jeremy, ‘a place I would have loved to work at, if I’d only found out about it earlier!’
Hunting out ideas
‘When I launched Tavat in 2010 I was looking to create a top class brand. At the time we used to say that what was needed was something unique, something that all the world’s best opticians would want to get their hands on. So we set to work on creating a great many different product stories. Each single product was a unique and totally new creation. Norman paid little attention to what the sector’s large groups were doing and the result was designs of all sorts.’
Jeremy tells us that Norman’s ideas came to him from anything and everything which captured his interest. And he certainly didn’t just twiddle his thumbs waiting around for ideas to come up. ‘When he wanted to design an eyewear collection inspired by aeronautics he spent a week on an aircraft carrier, getting ideas.’ And so it happened that Tactil, one of Tavat’s first collections, was inspired by a plane’s undercarriage.
The Flying Burritos aviator glasses
On the other hand, the idea for Soupcan – one of Tavat’s most iconic models – came to Norman from a plane builder in Arizona for whom he’d designed a racing plane. And that was when he saw a pair of old aviator glasses hanging on the wall that captured his attention right away. These had been found in the warehouse right after the war. They belonged to certain farming aircraft pilots who worked on planes which sprayed pesticides on corn and performed flight acrobatics at the weekends. They called themselves The Flying Burritos.
‘They had made their own flying goggles from a soup can and sewed leather around these two sections to get them to fit closely to their faces and then fit lenses into them. So Norman decided that making glasses like those would be a good idea.’
What he had in mind was glasses made up of two metal halves, closed up like a sandwich. ‘It was a completely new way of making glasses and a very complex one. Fronts are generally stamped out of a metal plate to make a form which is then milled. This method allows for a certain degree of precision. But when you take two pieces of metal, fold them and then pair them up it is much more difficult.’
From idea to reality
Making these glasses was a considerable challenge. ‘I didn’t know how to go about it so I went to Japan to put the idea to one of the most important eyewear factories I knew. They worked on it for two year but then gave up.’
It was in Italy that Jeremy found the partner he needed to bring Soupcan to fruition, and it took just six months. ‘No-one else had D.F.’s curiosity, interest and capacity and that was what it took. Factories generally require high volumes. But they were ready for a challenge.’
‘The manufacturer’s skill is everything. This mindset has survived in very few factories and the new generations are generally not interested in such things. Without D.F. making Soupcan would have been impossible.’
So that is how the collection was born and it’s been a very successful one over the years. ‘It is all down to Norman and his curiosity when he saw the glasses in that small airport in Arizona.’
‘I’ve known D.F. my whole life and I’ve always got on extremely well with them. In my day Giovanni Franzoia was a very well known mold worker. Luckily his children [Lara and Sergio Franzoia] have kept the firm going with the same spirit as their parents and shown an ability to take on the challenges currently facing the eyewear industry. D.F. has top class, I’d even say unique, quality and technical skills. They are open to challenges and interested in finding solutions together with their clients.’
Jeremy Baines, TAVAT founder
