The Tool Room

The Tool Room

The Tool Room is artist blacksmith, Conrad Hicks’ artisan kitchenware company specialising in hand-forged steel frying and roasting pans. Using an approach of ‘If you use beautiful tools, you make beautiful things, Conrad decided to develop kitchen implements to bring functional art into people’s homes. What once started as an innocent pocket money endeavour by Conrad’s children, Frieda and Leo have now grown into an established online shop selling artisan hand-forged kitchen implements for simply living.
Conrad Hicks was born in Cape Town in 1966. He studied Art and Design at The Cape Technikon and graduated with a distinction in 1986. Conrad specializes in hand-forged metal work and uses this technique in his sculptures as well as in his architectural and interior design projects. Conrad asserts that all traditional blacksmithing jointing methods have an innate metaphorical meaning, adding to the final symbolic meaning of the finished form. His forge including The Tool Room’s head office is housed in The Bijou, an old Art Deco cinema in Observatory, which he bought and began restoring in 1998.