The next time my designs would show up in frame lugs would be about a decade later. In 1990, Bridgestone Bicycle Company commissioned me to create a set of frame lugs for a line of road bicycles they were making. Unlike the first ones I did for Takahashi, the B.B.C. lugs needed to be ornate and have a look-at-me quality. These parts would be used on manufactured bicycles and the work order asked that the shapes I arrived at should have enormous visual appeal and encourage the potential client and end user to want to look at the bicycle and be pleased with the details. The interaction between me, Bridgestone’s U.S. office, as well as the folks based in Japan, spanned well over a year. While the prototypes took less than two days to create, we all spent months deliberating over whether the technology existed to produce such intricate parts.
The text of a fax that contains some of the information that speaks to the trepidation and delays involved has been posted elsewhere, but sadly, B.B.C. closed its doors in the mid 1990s before the lugs were ever made, but the project was salvaged, tools were made, and the new lugs were ultimately used on the frames marketed by Rivendell Bicycles.
All This By Hand
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