“I put off the actual kill until the last moment,” says Marc Manceaux, who isn’t an assassin but the owner of the oldest piano-parts shop in Paris, recounting the twinge of regret he feels when he has to disassemble an intact instrument. In Tom Wrigglesworth and Mathieu Cuvelier’s captivating five-minute film, we meet this philosophical artisan and tour his shop, Fournitures Generales Pour Le Piano, which is packed from floor to ceiling with pianos in various stages of deconstruction. He can’t see his declining business lasting for more than another decade, but his mind is already occupied with a higher pursuit: the quest to create “a sound that doesn’t exist,” an instrument that combines the sounds of the piano, the lute, and the harp but with “the purity of one single string.” Get your daily dose of inspiration after the jump.
[via Kottke]