In case you hadn’t noticed, the big trend in these leaner, post­–economic disaster days has been to elevate the lowest of low-grade materials into something elegant by design. OSB, polystyrene, plywood, plastic, MDF, resin — the list is endless. But you’d be hard pressed to think of a designer who does the opposite, who purposefully debases the precious commodity he’s been trained to craft to perfection. And yet what other choice did David Taylor have? After graduating from Konstfack in 1999, the Stockholm-based silversmith began to see the price of his raw materials soar: “Silver simply became too expensive for me to work with,” he says. “Without the benefit of a commission, working on spec becomes impossible when silver has quadrupled in price over the last eight years.” But Taylor’s loss was our gain: The designer began dabbling a few years ago in what he calls “a cheaper neighborhood,” making object assemblages by grafting more inexpensive materials like concrete, brass, and steel onto smaller silver pieces.At the end of last year, his Crowd Candlesticks (below) — the most resolved of those mixed media experiments — made the rounds on design blogs. Today, Taylor offers us a peek of where the project is going — different materials, new forms (including the towers above, which are made from concrete, glass, copper, and acrylic, and each come with a secret compartment), and the possibility of multiples. “Originally, I wasn’t going to make duplicates. I was going to build a group and then replace those that were sold with new and different pieces, allowing the community to evolve with time. But you’ve got to eat, right? When Fritz Hansen wants to sell the first group in their Milan store and puts in an order for 8 sets, well, being a pragmatist makes life so much easier!”