Plastic Potting

I've decided to embrace the aesthetics of plastic. Disposal of our household containers is a hot topic thanks to David Attenborough (and a government of very late adopters!!) and I don't know how much energy is used in recycling to collect, sort, wash, shred, melt? etc but certainly alot. So if we can re-use as much as possible at home and in that way save on the recycling and change our idea of it as "waste" then that must surely be better.

These containers aren't ugly are they?  By the way I'm rooting and potting on spotty leaved begonias here. I see alot of great styling and photography online with beautiful objects, and interiors but sometimes I think the styling is too good and wonder where they hide all the "ugly" or off trend or un-photogenic kitchen stuff. I don't see why we cant have our beautiful ceramics and glass alongside reused plastic quite happily. We may need to re-jig our aesthetic ideas though. Fashion re-jigs that for you regularly anyway; it often only takes a few influential people and a wave of images to make our taste evolve.

The council used not to collect the lids for recycling so I started keeping them. I always think collections of these sort of objects can go to a (enlightened!) school for kids projects if they haven't found another use. I think alot of us makers hate throwing things away because we appreciate how things are made - the mould, the screw thread etc. My plan for these is to make some Xmas decorations with them next winter and the challenge is that they must not be naff and rubbishy looking! So here's my inspiration below.

These were given to me by the artist Lucy Casson who had found a collection of them in a charity shop. The blue and white decoration is made from 2 detergent bottle lids, 4 beads and a piece of a plastic flower - genius! So by incorporating the lids with a few other things I think you could make some acceptable Xmas tree decorations. Mine are an eclectic selection that's evolved over many decades and I love the quirkiest ones best so these two fit in perfectly.

If you need any more convincing about the dangers of plastic take a look at more of this work below by Chris Jordan. When I first saw these photos about 4 years ago I was shocked by the horrific beauty of them - as an abstract collage - but then the reality kicks in of these birds killed by our debris - devastating but important photographs.

Photo by Chris Jordan from his Midway project

And I spotted this plastic bottle mudguard extension in Paris many years ago. I borrowed the idea for my own bike by making holes in the mudguard and attaching a section of bottle by stitching it on with galvanised wire. I love simple but brilliant ideas like this.

The Survivor Sofa Story

I'm very much looking forward to this on Monday;

A documentary about pioneering design and recycling on Monday 14th December at 10pm on the Community Channel but if you're busy you can watch it here. It features my friends the lovely Urban Uphostery. See the trailer here.

Pipe Dream

This is the light I made using the bits of old clay pipes gathered mudlarking from the Thames river bed at low tide. I called it Mudlark's Pipe Dream. Apparently mudlarking is really trendy now (isn't everything!?) Anyway this piece is now Tokyo bound for my show and sale there in November at Found Garage; my clients new shop.
I didn't know how it was going to turn out I just knew I wanted to use the pipes somehow - so I just played around with them and colours and the result surprised me. I think it's two colour schemes merged.

TENT London

I really enjoyed TENT in the London Design Festival this weekend. It was good to meet The Rag and Bone Man and see his work in the flesh, I loved these metal coat hangers from golf clubs with lovely detailing. If you're looking for a present for a bloke......also check out his lighting and other metal adventures here.

I was super impressed by what the Urban Upholsterers have been up to. Andrea is very skilled at traditional upholstery techniques and he and Patrizia wanted to show the beauty of the inner workings. They've produced this sofa called the Baubau Sofa: it's a found piece (as always) and stripped down, repaired and then re-uphostered with no more padding than is necessary so you can see the history and the workings of the piece.

It's beautiful, I love it. You can see more much better photos than mine on their Facebook page. Watch the video of it at various stages, and see all their other recent developments.

Glass Heap Challenge 2

Fellow Challengers were from all over: here in the foreground the big bottle lamp is by Team Dega: Agnes Deli & Endre Gaal from Hungary, also theirs are hanging plastic screens with glass debris sandwiched inside. In the background was an installation by another team. Amongst the scrap we had on offer were alot of bottles, off-cuts from designers and waste from industry, there seemed plenty of quantity but not a huge cross section to choose from. The initiative of the project was to address what can be done with glass waste from different sources.

The Stipglas team from the Netherlands brought their own small kiln and crushed bottles etc into tiny pieces (frit) put this in moulds and pushed it through the kiln, warming, heating and then controlled cooling to produce little tiles.

Another funky lamp by Team Dega from Hungary.

This tower is by Katharina Kleinfeld from Germany.

Glass is an considered an extravagant material to work with when hot because of the power needed to get the temperatures required.

Although I was working with 2 hot glass artists we only used cold working techniques of cutting, bonding and assembling.

Glass Heap Challenge

I've been at the International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge near Birmingham. Since going to Pilchuck Glass School last summer I've been learning about the glass world. This festival is every 2 years and hosts a Biennale of contemporary British studio glass. I was lucky enough to take part in the first Glass Heap Challenge organised by artist Matt Durran.  In teams of three, seven teams attempted to make something from the discarded glass off cuts etc that had been donated to the project.

We named our team Accidental Assemblage and my team mates were glass artists Scott Benefield and Andrea Spencer. We'd all agreed that we couldn't plan much other than to bring some useful tools and materials - we wanted to do something different from our normal way of working and see what the scrap suggested. We chose these blue sheets with a hole missing and by overlaying them could create a stronger, denser sheet to play with. We added some lens type discs for variety. Somehow we decided to make a folding screen with glass hinges and a guttering system of bottles sawn in half lengthways - thanks to the Hungarian team's disc saw! the idea came from collecting rainwater.

The tiny orange blobs on the top corners were sugru, used to cover the sharp corners.

We found that if the water ran fast it could over-shoot the next bottle and if it dribbled it would under-shoot so we added a chain dribble guide inspired by a Japanese system.

We also needed to make a funnel from a bottle above right and we bought a bowl from a charity shop for water collection - we returned this to the same shop at the end of the Festival. Visitors to the show enjoyed pouring the water and the sound of it's journey made it more poetic than we'd planned.

Package Deal

Can you see what this bag is woven from ?
Here's a closer view.

It's strips of Tetra Pak drinks cartons.
Have you ever tried to tear one? They're so strong. I bought this on a market stall in southern Portugal from some quite elderly weavers. I love the mixture of the silver interior and the outside's colours and text. I know we can recycle Tetra Paks now but they get soaked to seperate the paperboard, plastic and aluminium which seems long winded. I was trying to think what else you could use the washed carton material for: I have made wallet type things from it. It's such a strong material it would be good to re-use it without having to reform the components. Maybe you could fill them with sand to make bricks and then build a house?  seriously.... I'm meeting an architect friend later today so I shall run that one past her. Incidentally, Mr Tetra Pak inventor/producer is one of the richest people on the planet I believe.