As I wrapped up with Hinmaton at Stijl Cycles, he pointed me to the adjacent booth. There, with quite a few bikes standing in a small 10×10 footprint was Ed Jones, who had mentored and inspired Hinmaton and is the man behind Cycles ED. Or CED for short.
CED’s bikes have a unique appearance even from afar, thanks to the tube shapes and connections, but when you get up close is when you see the real artistry. We’ve seen plenty of amazing lugs before, but nothing like this. Three dimension doesn’t even do it justice; they’re just layered and shaped and painted in ways that bring new visual depth and delight to artisan bicycles.
Click through for some amazing artwork…
The leaves use a multi layered approach, both offset and multi-stepped. The latter we’ve seen on Stijl’s Iron Man bike from NAHBS 2013, which illustrates the influences at play.
Note the subtle gradation of paint hues from the bottom of the frame to the top.
The etched flowers on the brace almost overshadow the finely shaped brake mounts. Where a lot of builders are content to have flat tabs, CED’s took the extra step of putting a shoulder around the bolts.
Oddly enough, Ed had that 29er tucked between tables, even though it had the most extensive design work. That said, the others were no slouch!
Multi-step lugs and a bit of shaping at the top and bottom of the headtube are left unpainted to call attention to them.
The rack and fender mounts and cable stops are equally detailed, a real step above stock items on most bikes.
The Dragonfly road bike used high gloss and metallic paints to really highlight the handiwork, with masked painted dragonflies carrying the them across the frame.
This is a front derailleur mount concept on another MTB frame he had.
Another frame on display had a similar green hue, but had perhaps the best shaping around the joints than any of them. The tree is cool, but don’t miss the tapered, lateral tubes connecting the seatstay to the dropout.
H.R. Giger comes to mind.
He’s also making these Bi-Planar hubs with a cosmetic wood shell exterior. We’re getting more info on these for a future post.
