While it’s what ends up in the coffee cup that matters the most, what we see of the process is an intrinsic part of the overall experience. The tools used to make, serve, and consume coffee are undeniably important, and their aesthetic leaves an imprint. Of course,ย things canโt just look goodโthey have to be functional. In a craft industry driven by precision, coffee gear has to work, and it has to work well.
Thatโs part of what inspired Charlie Luong to launch ArtisanSmith, a line of coffee accoutrements handcrafted to order, with everything from tampers andย dosing cups to aprons. Luong is a true jack of all trades, with experienceย as a blacksmith, coppersmith, carpenter, leathersmith, and concreter, so you can see where the ArtisanSmith name comes from. Luongโs work is distinguishable for his funky designsโlike the ergonomic kettleโand his striking use of copper, be it in a custom-made dripper or a dosing funnel.
But Luong may never have become a craftsman had it not been for coffee; trace his history and coffee is the thread that ties everything together. โMy family has been growing coffee in Vietnam for over 50 years, and still do, even though they are robusta,” he says. “You can say coffee is in my blood.” His immediate family fled the country in 1975, and eventually resettled in Australia when Luong was a child.
It was there that Luong eventually stumbled upon the barista profession, and like many in the field, he soon enough hadย dreams of opening his own cafe. โI found a cheap rent site in the suburb of Gordon in Sydney, and with only $35k in the bank, stupidly I decided to take the risk and sign the lease,โ says Luong. But as he learned, $35,000 doesn’tย go very far when it comesย to building out a cafe business, and he realized that to fulfill his dream he would have to do much of the work to get the cafe up and running himself. โI went to hardware houses to attend free courses,โ says Luong. He went anywhere he could to get free help or payments in kind, from carpenters to blacksmiths. Armed with the knowledge of what he needed, he would go to junk yards to source the cheapest materialsโsometimes even freeโthat he could find. His career as a craftsman had begun.
Fortunately for Luong, the cafeโPottery Green Bakersโwas a success, and heย partnered with his baristas to open even more cafes. Building upon the skills he had acquired inย launching theย first cafe, Luong went a step further and took a stab at making his own coffee equipment, too. โWe decided the products in the coffee industry wereย either too expensive or not as good as we thought they could be, so we started making our own coffee-related products by hand,โ Luong says. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention.
From a desire to construct functional and beautiful coffee tools that were also in a price range that cafe owners and baristas could afford, ArtisanSmith was born. Luong has expanded his repertoire from his initial coffee tools, but no matter what he is doing, his focus is always on his craft. โI also started to design and build cafes, bars, houses, etc.,โ says this true artisan. โEverything, of course, handmade from only natural materials.โ
Luong points out that while copper can be a difficult metal to work with, โthe reward is that it looks amazing and has great heat-retention ability, which is so important for the specialty-coffee industry, especially with manual-brewing methods.โ
Luong recently launched the ArtisanSmith website, where people can order custom-made tools of all kinds. But for the versatile Luong, this is only the beginning. ArtisanSmith is currently working on the design and build of a new cafe in the Sydney suburb of Willoughby, and the brand also now customizes espresso machines. โThere are so many projects and designs that I want to do that it’s impossible to put [them] down on paper. I love what I doโI honestly can’t wait to get to work everyday, and there are not enough hours in the day for me.โ
Anna Brones is a Sprudge.com staff writer. Read more Anna Brones on Sprudge.
Photos courtesy of ArtisanSmith.ย
