Specimen Products

Ian Schneller. I started using Specimen Products as a name for my sculptures in 1981 while I was an undergraduate at the Memphis Academy of Art. It was the anonymity of the words Specimen and Products that appealed to me. It seemed a funny little ruse pretending to be a firm instead of myself. After I became a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1984, Specimen Products expanded into a music and instrument-making endeavor 1st to fulfill my own individual requirements, and then for my friends, fellow bandmates, and other musicians. A growing clientele speedily turned this little ruse into a real firm.