From iTunes to Hand-Carved Spoons with Windy Chien

"I got to SF before the techies," says rising crafts star Windy Chien. "It was freaks, bohemians and artists; you could do anything and it was a valid life." Chien is a case in point. Now a full-time master spoon carver living in the heart of San Francisco's Mission district, she has been a punk rocker, a filmmaker, a record shop owner, and an Apple executive who helped create iTunes. "The whole time I was at Apple I knew it was temporary," she says. "I will always be a punk rocker at heart." Her work combines the sensual with the pragmatic, updating classic genres: wooden spoons, but also macrame and jewelry. Each piece is slyly funny as well as beautiful, something both Steve Jobs and Jello Biafra would love. To see more, go to Windy Chien.

Above: Chien's spoons are made from walnut and feature chubby handles - she calls them "fat bottoms" – that beg to be squeezed. They can be found on her site, and an exclusive spoon and spoon butter set ($100) is being offered exclusively at Food52. Photo by Windy Chien.

Above: Windy's walnut Small Corner Everything Spoons are $92 each.

Above: Chien carves her spoons in a backyard studio filled with the paint-by-numbers paintings she's collected for years. Her trademark corner spoon - available in tiny, small, medium, large, huge, and for lefties starting at $78 – was not a deliberate response to the impossibility of using a round spoon to get everything out of a square container. Chien says, "It was a mistake - one day I was busy rounding out the back of a spoon and – oh! – there's a corner left!" Photo by Leslie Santarina, Spotted SF.

Above: Windy with a bouquet of her hand-carved spoons.

Above: Chien says she doesn't understand the current faithful revivial of 70s-style macramé.  She proposes, instead, "modern macrame" to bring beauty to extension cords and hanging lights (cords available in white for $130, lights in black or white for $180 at windychien.com). Photo by Windy Chien.

Above: The Modern Macrame Light, made from natural white cotton rope, is $180.

Above: A set of four Bad Ass Brass Knuckles, designed to be worn everyday, everywhere, is $160.

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