No Serial Number Summer Issue 2018

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

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CRAFT | HERITAGE | ENVIRONMENT

shades of green… the journey of four skeins of yarn

Mushrooms and Dragonflies: The Art of Upcycling Metal with Old Repurposed Tools

Kufic Script, Paper and Ink: In Search of Beauty From the Past to the Present

“I am a recycler, oh yeah baby”: Teaching children about circular economy through design

Dear Readers,

Credits

We’ve reached another Summer edition and we’re more excited than ever! Starting from our traditional crafts section, we have featured here fibre experiments by Anna del Col who uses flax-leaved daphne to make yarn in different shades of green, the eco printing of Caroline Beech, and in the same section we have a feature on upcycled metal worked by Brett James, the ‘earth clay’ of Kelly Magleby, and the stone carving of Martin Wilson. We love having such variety of materials in this section! We also have an “ink special” feature with two very different artists who make inks from scratch for their work, Joumana Medlej a calligrapher who makes geometric mandalas inspired by the 7th century Kufic script and Ross Belton who makes 3D art with found objects, fibres experiments, natural dyeing and more. In the fashion and upcycling section, we look at the sustainable fashion projects run

by Zoë Burt and Becka Wright’s mission to bring back unwanted fabrics into circulation.

In our innovative materials section, we have a fantastic piece about the potentials of mycelium for growing sustainable materials and a feature dedicated to artists who are finding some original solutions to the growing problem of e-waste. We also continue our journey of discovery of creative plastic recycling and zero waste initiatives around the world, crowdfunding projects for the planet and more!

Another exciting piece of news is that in May 2018 we launched a series of monthly meetups, workshops and events dedicated to all the realities that we have been promoting tirelessly in our publications and online for the past two years. Our events will take place in a scenic location in the London Docklands (UK) at a cafe, studio and exhibition space run

by Bow Arts. You are all invited to join us onsite and online on the last Thursday of every month for networking, Q&As and workshops. Talks are free to attend onsite and will be livestreamed on all our social media channels where you’ll be able to participate remotely.

Find out more about our events here www.noserialnumber.org/events.

As always, we look forward to hearing from you. Do share your feedback, ideas or creations with us and we’ll take them on board and spread the word whenever we can.

Alessandra & NSN Team

Editor Alessandra Palange Art Editor Francesca Palange NSN Italy Editor Rosa Rossi Marketing Alessandra Palange Francesca Palange Translations Fuschia Hutton Subscriptions & Advertising info@noserialnumber.org Cover Photos Hope by Ross Belton (2015) Selected for Inspired By the V&A These figures pay homage to the ghosts of ‘fallen’ women, highlighting the issue of female suicide, both in the victorian era and through to today. I was inspired by the wrapped cloak and layered clothes ‘binding’ the young woman and her child together, as portrayed in the etching ‘The Bridge of Sighs’

by Millais. Recycled fabric, Rust printed, cyanotype birch bark, clay pipes, rusted wire Graphic Content: Fonts by Creativeqube Design,

By Lef Design, Mainfile, Freepik and desings by whiteheartdesign Copyright All images are copyright protected and are the property of their respective makers/owners as detailed in each article and photo.

No Serial Number Magazine is published four times a year. No responsability will be accepted for any errors or omissions, views expressed or comments by editors, writers or interviewees. No Serial Number Magazine makes all efforts to advertise products that are in accordance with its ethos. However, goods advertised are not necessarily endorsed by No Serial Number Magazine. Information is correct at the time of publication.

No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission. All prices are accurate at time of going to press but these may change at any time.

No Serial Number Team ALESSANDRA, EDITOR I am a qualitative researcher in the social sciences and education with a keen interest in citizenship.

Being the editor of No Serial Number Magazine is a hobby for me, something that I do out of passion and with the belief that there are many things we can do to make the world a better place, one of them is producing and consuming more responsibly as a society. I originally had the idea of this magazine when I started networking with eco-friendly artists, artisans, and creative businesses online for a family start-up business. At this point, I realised how diverse and creative the environmental movement really is and thought it would be great to have a place where we could tell all these stories and explore the role of creativity in the search for environmental solutions. If you’d like to propose a story for No Serial Number Magazine you can email me here: editorial@noserialnumber.org

FRANCESCA, ART EDITOR After many years working as a retail manager in the fashion industry, I decided to leave the retail world when I became disenchanted with its focus on profits over the quality of products and the customer experience. I decided to take the leap and start my own business, first by collaborating with eco print artist Michela Pasini and then with my family on the development of No Serial Number Magazine. With time, I became more and more passionate about the graphic design process, so much so that I am now in charge of the design of magazine. I also keep track of emails, sales, and subscriptions, and run the social media pages.

If you have any questions about your subscription, a wholesale inquiry or would like to talk about cross-promotion, I am the one to ask! You can contact me here info@noserialnumber.org

ROSA, NSN ITALY EDITOR I am a retired Latin and Greek teacher and an avid knitter and crocheter. I have published school textbooks and work as a freelance writer for Pearson Italia. I am also a consultant for various cultural projects in Italy. At the moment, I am managing the development of a new library within the theatre of Caffeina Cultura and Caffeina Cultura’s own bookstore.

For No Serial Number Magazine, I am mainly in charge of finding eco-sustainable realities in Italy, where I am based, and writing about them. I also manage the Italian Blog of No Serial Number Magazine, so if you’re interested in No Serial Number Italia, please visit the blog it.noserialnumber.org or email me: noserialnumberitaly@gmail.com

Featured contributors. .

Kate Stuart

I’m a practising artist, writer and craftswoman based in the North East of England. I specialise in upcycling, zero waste living, quilting, and painting with acrylics on canvas. I live with my partner, our two children whom we home educate, and a variety of pets. As a family, we aspire to return to the crofting roots of my ancestors, and to live a zero waste, self-sufficient life.

Etsy Shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shopThePhoenixGreenStore Facebook and Instagram: @thephoenixgreenstore

Paige Perillat-Piratoine

I am especially interested in growing the urban fabric. From urban agriculture to biomaterials, I work with projects that contribute to a more organic cityscape and report on the people that make the steps in that direction.

Pam Newton

Working towards a Textile degree, graduating in 2018, specialising in Weave and Mixed Media at Coleg Sir Gar, West Wales. I am fascinated by nature and the human interaction with it. With a background in horticulture, my work involves creating natural fibres and colours, borrowed from the landscape made to be returned. I love creating a sustainable lifestyle and enjoy teaching, writing and travel; being inspired by other artists and places.

Website: www.naturalthreads.co.uk Instagram: @by_natural_thread

Holly Foat

As a freelancer, I’m passionate about supporting the local community and helping local businesses. I also work in ethical marketing, and enjoy promoting sustainable living and blogging about it. I’m a craft and upcycling enthusiast, especially textiles, although I rarely find the time to create as my two young children keep me busy!

Blog: www.noserialnumber.org/directory/author/holly-foat/ Facebook: @EthicalByHeart Twitter: @CaptainHolly

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR US? GET IN TOUCH!!

If you are passionate about crafts, art, design, social projects, zero waste and all the other subjects that we cover in our magazine then get in touch and you could become one of our contributors.

All you need to do is to send us an email to info@noserialnumber.org.

We also have opportunities to write for our blog so get in touch!

Contents TRADITIONAL ARTS, TRADES AND CRAFTS 6. Bristol Cloth Project 10. Shades of Green... The Journey of Four Skeins of Yarn 14. Making Natural Connections 16. Rope Works: 3D Creations From Textiles 18. Making Pottery the Anasazi Way 22. Reclaiming Stone and Slate: The Unusual Journay of a Scientist Turned Artist 25. Mushrooms and Dragonflies: The Art of Upcycling Metal with Old Repurposed Tools 27. Everlasting Flowers: a Tutorial by Brett James

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Shades of Green

INK SPECIAL SECTION 28. Kufic Script, Paper and Ink: In Search of Beauty From the Past to the Present 33. Tutorial: Making Oak Galls Ink 34. The Art of Ross Belton: Exploring Space and the Pursuit of Sustainability 39. Mark Making Tutorial with Ink and Homemade Brushes by Ross Belton

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Ecovative

Ross Belton

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SUSTAINABLE FASHION 44. In Conversation with Nature: Discovering Sustainability in Textiles with Zoë Burt UPCYCLING HUB 48. Fabric Yarn From Textile Waste 50. Fabric Yarn Purse Tutorial by Becka Wright INNOVATIVE MATERIALS 52. Ecovative: Pioneering Fungal Biomaterial 56. Pure Waste: Upcycling Leftovers From the Cotton Industry E-WASTE 58. Weaving Cassette Tapes: Sentimental Waste, Cloth and Craftivism 60. E-Waste on Etsy HOME CHRONICLES 61. “I am a Recycler, Oh Yeah Baby”: Teaching Children About Circular Economy Through Design

Primitive Clay

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Kufic Script

KITCHEN CHRONICLES 64. ‘Hurray for Colour!’ Vegeterian Segment Quiche WORKSHOP STATION PRECIOUS PLASTIC 66. Democratising Plastic Recycling

ZERO WASTE 68. Setting Up a Zero Waste Shop

PETITIONS 70. Petition: More Sustainable Nappies by 2020

ISSUES FOR ETHICAL BUSINESSES PROJECTS FOR THE PLANET THE ECO CRAFTERs AND ENTREPRENEURs’ AWARD ECO-FRIENDLY IDEAS COMPETITION

SUBSCRIBE

Each issue is created with love: love for our world heritage and love for the environment. We are really passionate about meeting creative people that put all their effort in combining these two elements - that’s why this magazine exists! In this day and age we desperately need to change the way we live, consume and produce. We hope that with this magazine we are contributing towards this goal. If you love what you see subscribe today and help us grow and reach more people! www.noserialnumber.org

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SHOW US YOUR WORK Share your projects, photos or ideas with us, use the tag #noserialnumbermagazine Tweet and image of your work @N0serialnumberM Find us on Facebook @Noserialnumbermagazine Tag us on Instagram @Noserialnumbermagazine We’ll share it with our followers!

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ARTICLE SUBMISSION & BOOK REVIEWS We are proud to have a global readership so we are always curious to learn of sustainable creative initiatives around the world. Get in touch and tell us your story: info@noserialnumber.org

PAST ISSUES Available to purchase on our website www.noserialnumber.org, Magzter.com or Issuu.com

EVENTS We are happy to announce the beginning of our monthly Networking Events. These will be held at RAW Lab in East London and will also be livestreamed online for those who can’t join us.

SUBSCRIBE We want to keep the magazine affordable because we believe the content we publish can make a difference.

You can subscribe online for only £28 / $36 (plus delivery) and you will receive four seasonal issues right to your doorestep!

TALK ABOUT US We decided to publish independently and grow sustainably and organically, so our success depends entirely on our readers.

Please help us spread the word by mentioning us on Twitter, sharing our Facebook posts and blogging about us. In this way, you are supporting a small independent business dedicated to the promotion of other small creative and sustainable businesses.

RENEWALS You can decide to make a one-off payment for a subscription, in which case we’ll send you a reminder when your subscription is about to expire, or have your subscription automatically renewed every 3, 6 or 12 months. Find all our options on the website.

AUTUMN Issue 2018 • • • • • • • •

Crochet Coral Reef Project Textile narratives The Glass Hub Traditional stone carving Gumdrop, recycling chewingum Quilting Up-cycling furniture Innovative designs

& Much More ...  OUT ON 23.09.2018  SUBSCRIBE ONLINE: www.noserialnumber.org

SELL OUR MAGAZINE We want to share our profits with like-minded artisans and creative businesses rather than big chain stores. We want our magazines to reach people who will appreciate and collect them. Please get in touch if you’d like display No Serial Number Magazine in your shop or in your workshop.

PINTEREST Follow our Pinterest boards for vintage fashion, traditional toys, natural colours, textile design, ecofriendly ideas & recommended books www.pinterest.com/ noserialnumber

TRADITIONAL ARTS, TRADES AND CRAFTS

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

Bristol Cloth Project Words and photography by Babs Behan

The Bristol Cloth is a locally sourced and manufactured cloth, using lambswool from holistically managed Fernhill Farm, just outside of Bristol. Organic traditional British plant dyes, dyed by hand in Botanical Inks natural dye studio in Bristol and woven at the Bristol Weaving Mill.

The first industrial loom to open in Bristol in nearly 100 years. The cloth is made from 100% natural, non-toxic materials and is not only safely biodegradable but actually offers biological nutrients back into the soil. The whole system is climate beneficial and demonstrates the way in which things should be made to create a sustainable future and regenerate the health of our biosphere.

Bristol Cloth is made using a beautifully soft lambswool, which initially comes in three colours - a cream, a beige and dark grey/brown. We use the cream yarn for dyeing with our plant dyes to create an orange and use the other two colours in their natural undyed state.

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Fernhill Farm uses holistic farming techniques to manage their land and maintain high standards of animal welfare.

Animals are grazed in a way which mimics natural grazing patterns, with the flock being moved on from one area to the next in quick rotation. This allows an increase in plant growth and diversity within the soil, which means greater levels of carbon sequestering, capturing carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil where it belongs.

This system has the potential to reverse the effects of climate change and is therefore a climate beneficial way of farming. The increased plant diversity also means that more nutrients are being put back into the earth and thus regenerating the health of the soil. With mass scale monocrop farming and chemical spraying diminishing the health of our soils, to the point where it is said we have less than 100 harvests left in the UK, it is reassuring to know that alternative solutions are possible. Sustainable systems are not enough, we need to create things in a way which are

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regenerative.

The sheep are hand blade sheared, which means that they get to keep a layer of their wool on them after shearing, as opposed to machine trimming, which takes off the whole fleece down to the skin. With a layer of fleece left, they are warmer at this particularly cold point in the year and can therefore be kept outdoors during lambing, which reduces their levels of stress.

The lambswool is a Shetland/Romney breed, which Fernhill call their “Mendip type�. The animals are bred for their meat and, unlike many other farms, the fleece is of a high enough quality to be used as a fibre, creating a valuable second revenue and reducing waste.

Once the wool has been hand blade sheared from the sheep, it is sent to the spinners in Yorkshire to be scoured, carded, graded and spun. Halifax Spinning Mill are a lovely team who are passionate about working with primitive and rare breeds and natural fibres. While regenerating their industry, promoting British traceable production since opening in 2009.

We provide them with an organic natural soap to wash our wool, making sure every step of the process is biological.

The wool is spun to a 2-ply yarn for us by Paul at Halifax and coned up ready to be spun, while the cream batch is made into 250g hanks for ease when dyeing.

British dye plants with better fastness. We use madder, which is a red root from a green leafy plant that is part of the legume family. Wild madder can be found growing in nature reserves and other wild places in the UK, however its cultivated version is used more commonly as a dye material for its richer, deeper red colours. This is overdyed with a clear bright yellow from Weld, which is a yellow flowering plant.

This is also a heritage plant which grows abundantly across the UK. Both of these dye plants thrive in poor soil conditions and are very easy to grow. We have some growing in our new dye garden at Feed Bristol that we plan to use for our next Bristol Cloth project once they are fully established. The orange we get from these two plants sits wonderfully with the two natural undyed fleece colours and make a beautiful cloth.

We sourced the weave design via a nationwide competition

The yarn is sent back to us in Bristol to be hand dyed in the Botanical Inks studio in the Barton Hill ward, which has a fascinating textile history of its own.

We originally chose the colour for the yarn by sourcing organic onion skins from local shops and used them to create a beautiful rusty orange colour. As this is not such a colourfast dye, we decided to match the colour by using traditional

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in 2015, when Bristol was nominated the European Green Capital. A panel of local judges helped us to shortlist the entrants, and these four designs were presented to the public in the Bristol European Green Capital Labspace in Bristol’s harbourside.

also happen to be a fully female team.

This regenerative cloth production system prioritises local non-toxic fibre and plant dye sourcing along with local manufacture. It improves soil health and reverts climate warming by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil. Investing in local producers strengthens our local textile economy and creates community. The minimal transport mileage between suppliers to consumer also makes for a lower carbon footprint.

The public were invited to come in and vote for their favourite design by sticking post-it notes to our display board. The winning design came from designer Wendy Kotenko, who teaches textiles at Falmouth University. Her design is inspired by the local basket weaving tradition found in Cornwall, where she lives. The base of the design uses the darker yarn contrasting the beige, with shots of the plant-dyed yarn streaking through it.

This is a fabric which is of the local environment and not only safe to go back into the earth at the end of its useful lifecycle, but actually offers biological nutrients to the soil for other lifeforms to feed off of.

The Bristol Weaving Mill is a micro-mill situated in the heart of Bristol, just across the road from the Botanical Inks dye studio, making it especially easy to transport the yarn from one studio to another and reducing energy consumption.

The Bristol Weaving Mill was set up in 2015 by fashion duo Franki Brewer and Juliet Bailey, whose sister company Dash and Miller has attained global recognition as one of the best fabric design studios for woven fabric and textile trends.

The mill houses an industrial loom which is the first to be seen in Bristol since the last industrial mill closed its doors 90 years ago, coincidently in Barton Hill.

This system mimics the cyclical patterns found in nature and is inspired by the Fibreshed concept from Northern California which seeks to support the emergence of “​regional fibre systems that build soil and protect the health of our biosphere”.

Fibershed was founded by natural dyer Rebecca Burgess to develop regional and regenerative fibre systems by connecting all those involved in the local fibre community, from grower and farmer to spinner, weaver, dyer and tailor to consumer, to develop ways in which production systems can be transformed to rebuild local regional manufacturing and farm carbon.

The Great Western Cotton Works was open between 1838 and 1925, to spin and weave cotton into cloth. It was the only cotton mill in the South West of England, with most others being up North in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. In 1840 it employed around 923 people, of which 609 were girls and 113 boys. In 1849 the number had doubled to 2000 employees. Bales of cotton would arrive on ship from Georgia and be transported via boat from Liverpool and along the Feeder Canal.

This was envisioned as a tool for others to replicate globally, and it has taken off, with Fibershed affiliate brands and communities popping up all around the world.

The system asks us to consider the full lifecycle of our garments, from soil-to-soil, understanding the entire journey of how it was made, by who, with what and can it safely biodegrade? It asks us to make our clothing last by makingdo and mending. A garment should last at least 10 years and this requires that it is well made with good quality materials, looked after well and fixed to prevent it from falling into

The Bristol Weaving Mill is a very different mill, employing high ethical standards, sustainability and traceability. They 8

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disuse.

“Future Fibershed communities will rely upon renewable energy powered mills that will exist in close proximity to where the fibres are grown. Through strategic grazing, conservation tillage, and a host of scientifically vetted soil carbon enhancing practices, our supply chains will create ‘climate beneficial’ clothing that will become the new standard in a world looking to rapidly mitigate the effects of climate change. We see a nourishing tradition emerging that connects the wearer to the local field where the clothes were grown, building a system that can last for countless generations into the future.” Fibershed.com The Bristol Cloth project will be launched soon via a crowdfunding campaign, in Autumn 2018 to pre-sell the first 200 metres of cloth. We invite you to invest in this system by pre-ordering your own meterage of the cloth to create your own bioregional garments, homewares and accessories with.

There will also be finished blanket scarves, throws and the option to have a bespoke tailored suit made with the cloth.

For full info please visit the Bristol Cloth website and stay up to date by following Bristol Cloth and Botanical Inks on Instagram @Bristolcloth and @Botanicalinks.

If you wish to make an enquiry, please email Babs at: ​ hello@botanicalinks.com.

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For more information about Fibershed, visit www.fibershed.com.

FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.botanicalinks.com Facebook and Instagram: @botanicalinks

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ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

Shades of Green… The Journey of Four Skeins of Yarn Words By Rosa Rossi, Anna De Col Photography by NSN Team

This story begins with Daphne gnidium (flax-leaved daphne). This Mediterranean plant’s scientific name alludes to Apollo’s mythical pursuit of the young maiden Daphne, which culminated in her being turned into a laurel tree, a similar plant.

Gnidium reveals its geographical association with the Ancient Greek city of Knidos, which was situated in Turkey’s Datça peninsula, on the coast of Asia Minor.

Our present-day Daphne, Anna De Col, lives and works in Villamassargia, in Sardinia. The Sardinian name for flax-leaved daphne is truiscu. Just like in the rest of the Mediterranean, it grows wild there and is known for its poisonous properties and thousands of uses. It has been used for treating people and animals, as rat poison and as a broom for sweeping traditional ovens. Placing hands and feet on the still-warm broom was even used to treat chilblains. Bunches of Daphne were hung in chicken coops to rid hens of fleas. When goats and cows gave birth, it was placed near the placenta to keep the flies at bay.

Anna has researched the use of Daphne gnidium as a dye plant. It is one of the most widely used dye plants in Sardinia and can produce different colours depending on the part of the plant used and time of harvest.

Anna, dyeing, and spinning I use the leaves, twigs, and bark of the Daphne. I always work outside, whether I am breaking the twigs into pieces, or simmering the dye. The smell is so pungent it can cause throat or breathing problems. I dye wool and silk by pre-mordanting them with potassium alum (I use 15% 10

of the dry weight of the fabric). To create yellow hues, I soak Daphne gnidium twigs in water overnight, and then simmer for a couple of hours. When the dye bath has cooled, I submerge the wool and begin heating again for at least an hour, never letting the temperature rise above

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80°C. Sometimes I keep the Daphne gnidium in the dye bath as I heat. Other times, I filter it out before adding the wool.

Once heated for the right amount of time, I remove from the heat and let it cool until the next day. I then use the same dye bath at least three more times. Each time, the yellow becomes fainter.

If I want green, on the other hand, I use a small amount of an exotic ingredient: a teaspoon of logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum) mixed with Daphne gnidium. I follow the same method. A great result is guaranteed – I obtain a whole spectrum of greens from the very lightest to the very darkest.

By increasing or decreasing the amount of logwood by even a fraction, I achieve an almost infinite variety of green shades. I use each dye bath at least three times, producing ever-lighter shades.

The colour created using this method is extremely robust on wool and silk. I have subjected it to all sorts of tests to make sure. It resists sunlight, soapy washes, scrubbing, and felting.

After dyeing, I begin carding the wool using a manual drum carder. I sometimes combine the different shades to create multicoloured blends and sometimes add silk threads.

I then move on to spinning with a treadle spinning wheel.

Now and again, I do allow myself the luxury of a traditional spindle, so I can breathe in and enjoy every centimetre of the 11

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yarn as I work it. I used Australian merino wool tops (ribbon) to create this yarn. Sometimes I dye the wool before spinning, sometimes after.

I am not (yet) a professional - I spin and dye for pleasure.

Every now and again, I get distracted while spinning and sometimes I might go a bit too fast, sometimes a bit too slow. Or sometimes, because I like to spin by hand, the yarn that passes through my hands doesn’t always have the same weight and so, if I always pedal at the same speed, the finer yarn twists more and the thicker yarn twists less. The small amount of silk added to the darkest yarn is mulberry silk tops, dyed with Daphne and spun with the wool.

My spinning phase is as follows: first I spin two separate bobbins of singles. I then combine them, spinning the wheel in the opposite direction. When I spin the first single, I turn the wheel to the right. I then carry on turning to the right as I spin the second. However, when I ply them together, I have to turn the wheel to the left to obtain the correct tension. Hey presto, the yarn is ready.

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Books Atzei, A. D. (2003). Le piante nella tradizione popolare della Sardegna: documentazione sugli usi alimentari, aromatizzanti, profumieri, artigianali, cosmetici, medicinali, veterinari, magici, ornamentali, rituali, religiosi, tintori, antiparassitari e vari, delle piante.

Delfino Carlo Editore. [Plants in Sardinian folklore Italian book written by Father Aldo Domenico Atzei of the Order of Friars Minor and published by Carlo Delfino Editore, contains vast documentation on plant use as food, spice, perfume, craft, cosmetics, medicines, veterinary cures, magic, decoration, rituals, religion, dyeing, antiparasitics, and more.]

Cardon, D. (2007) Natural dyes: sources, tradition, technology and science. Archetype.

Cardon, D. (2016) The Dyer's Handbook: Memoirs on Dyeing by a French Gentleman-Clothier in the Age of Enlightenment Translated and Contextualised Oxbow Books Ltd

R FIND IT ONLINE Facebook: @anna.decol.5 Email: az.agri.decolpiras@gmail.com

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

Making Natural Connections Words by Pamela Newton Photography by Caroline Beech Have you ever considered why artists respond to their environments in the way they do? Is it all about making connections? For Caroline Beech, ‘Caro’, founder of Floral Forever, there has always been a connection with plants, wildlife and the environment. It has been a way of life; with idyllic memories as a child, of country walks and cycling along the hedgerows in Somerset with her siblings. Being encouraged by her father’s interest and knowledge of plants, wildlife and geology; filtering through like osmosis to her now running her own business. Caro feels fortunate that she had parents who encouraged her to be creative and she was “allowed to make a mess during this process.”

The methods she uses possibly reflect these connections made with environment through these early experiences.

For Caro, the love of eco printing possibly developed from those early experiments in her grandfather’s garden; with the making of ‘perfume’ from rose petals squished in water “much to Papa’s chagrin.”

from the corner of a bus stop or moss on a shed roof” now as the Artist in Residence at The King Edward Mine Museum in Troon Camborne. Caro indulges her passion for the environment but as seen through the 100-year-old eyes of the tin mining industry. Collecting observations of the structure, the plants and the wildlife inhabiting this unique environment, translating those observations using eco prints and occasionally cyanotypes. Caro, shares a valuable insight to her thought processes when considering her research, interested in “the juxtaposition of the wild plants with the stark monumental mine buildings, where nature takes over when man stops.” Perhaps understanding the processes involved, it will convince us further of how those all-important connections are made and interpreted in the work of artists and designers.

Eco-printing is growing into an incredibly popular ‘craft’, to get those clean prints takes skill. However, Caro reassuringly shares the important tip for all those wanting to try, “never think your result is a failure, there are no right or wrong results with eco print, if you don’t like what you have re-dye it or print over it, it’s that easy.” But how can we maximize the potential for success? Caro, is in her element, sharing that knowledge with plenty of workshops.

She shares some of her techniques with me. She quite often uses recycled fabric and always the soft rainwater she collects. Unsurprisingly, Caro wants to feel that her work is grounded in the earth and that she is not taking anything from the planet that she can’t give back. The fabric is soaked in a solution of soya milk and this precious rainwater

It is interesting to talk with Caro, being naturally inquisitive into what motivates us as artists, designers alike. How aware of how we are influenced and shaped by the connections we make are we? On moving to Cornwall, UK in 2013, Caro undertook a Foundation degree in Contemporary Creative Practice at her local college. The degree was an interdisciplinary programme covering textiles, photography, graphic design, 2D art and ceramics. It also gave her a “good grounding in professional practice.” It was here that a lecture on the possibility of art residencies after graduation, planted a seed.

Caro, finds inspiration in unlikely places, “the weed growing

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for several days; sometimes with an alum solution to aid light fastness. After being rinsed and dried; although the carefully placed leaves and petals are arranged on the cloth with aesthetics in mind, Caro, admits she “may leave them there for a couple of days while (she) considers them”. Then having rolled them up tightly around a metal pipe, they are placed in a domestic vegetable steamer. It is important to allow the magic of the alchemy take place, leaving the tight, steamed bundles to cool, however, even Caro is susceptible to “feeling impatient”.

For Caro, Floral Forever, offers an opportunity to create a diary of her prints, set into cushions and bags for purchase in her online shop. It’s important “to have an as plant friendly practice as possible” foraging from hedgerows or her own garden. However, it also allows her an opportunity to share knowledge with plenty of workshops. Autumn 2017 will see exciting new developments with further workshops exploring eco printing on paper and an exhibition culminating from the work at The King Edward Mining Museum, including results from interactive workshops held with the visitors throughout the summer. If you get a chance to visit this or any other exhibition perhaps consider the connections the artist is making. it is all in the connections, perhaps. It could be worth considering why their work is connecting with you. It could unveil some interesting and surprising results, just like unwrapping those unassuming bundles of eco-printed cloth in one of Caro’s workshops.

R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.floralforever.bigcartel.com Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/CaroBeechArtwork 15

Rope Works:

3D creations from textiles

Check page 65 to see rope WORKS events

Interview by NSN Team Photography by K. Kralovicova and Zuzana Lalikova Zuzana is a London-based artist who works with the ancient technique of coiling, which she applies to cotton, jute and sisal ropes. For her Rope Works project, she makes a variety of baskets of different shapes using subtle natural colours.

Hi Zuzana, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

Tell us first, what’s your professional and artistic background?

I finished a BA(Hons) Surface Textiles at London College of Fashion in 2012. But I come from a family of hobbyist makers and dyers. My mum is a great knitter, my dad works with wood, both my grandmothers embroider or knit, even my grandfather was really into macramé while he was still alive. So I grew up with things always being made around me. You could almost say it’s in my blood.

How did you learn to make baskets and vessels?

I made my first basket 2/3 years ago after I got myself as a present a book ‘Fibre sculpture’ by Janelle Porter. I really felt the need to make a 3D object from textiles. I had some old rope lying around and I came across this coiling technique just by coincidence probably somewhere on Pinterest. And that’s how I made the first vessel. I gave it to a friend as a gift. I then also took a short course in basket making.

What are the origins of the traditional coiling technique that you use? Does it originate in a particular region or locality?

Coiling is an ancient technique of making vessels that has been practised in many different cultures around the world particularly Native North Americans but also in parts of Africa. The exact origins are disputed as baskets would be made of materials like grass or pine needles and would disintegrate over time. Coiling is also used in ceramics; I love the duality of the technique. As a matter of fact, many people when they see my vessels for the first time think they are ceramics.

Why do you use cotton ropes in your 3D creations? How do you get the rope to stay together? Do you make the cotton ropes yourself or, alternatively, how do you source your ropes?

I prefer to use cotton rope in my baskets because it will go through a sewing machine relatively easily although I have also tried jute and sisal rope. Using a sewing machine allows me to work faster, but there are limitations to the shapes I can achieve compared to if I was stitching the rope by hand. The machine also adds firmness to the structure of the vessels.

I can see that you use natural dyes; do you dye the fibres yourself? Which natural dyes do you use? Why did you choose to use natural dyes rather than synthetic dyes for your work?

I dye the cotton rope with natural dyes obtained from plants like tea, turmeric, onion, avocado and, my favourite, indigo. I prefer the subtle colours of natural dyes compared to synthetic ones and there is of course the environmental factor that plays a huge part in my decision to use plants for dyes. I also like not knowing exactly how the colour is going to turn out. There are always slight differences between dye batches.

Which artists and artisans have inspired you to make 3D objects? Is there a particular artistic or artisanal movement that inspires your designs?

There are some absolutely stunning baskets being made by traditional artisans everywhere around the world who remain mainly nameless to some excellent contemporary basketry artists always pushing the technique forward.

Few of my favourite are people like Ferne Jacobs, Norie Hatakeyama and Maggie Smith.

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R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.ropeworks.tictail.com Instagram: @rope_works

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Making Pottery the Anasazi Way The Earth Skills of Kelly Magleby Words by Kate Stuart Photography by Kelly Magleby

There’s a feeling you get, holding a sherd of pottery that was made by hands long since turned to dust. A feeling of time-spanning connection. A hundred stories in this small fragment of wood fired clay, sitting in the palm of your hand. Seeing the fingerprints of some long-ago potter in a bowl that has somehow survived a thousand years or more, held in the earth from whence it came. The curiosity and wonder - whose were the hands that made this, who used it, for what, and what stories were told around this bowl, this plate? In ancient crafts, what comes first – the

archaeologist or the artist?

Kelly Magelby lives in Oram, Utah and knows all about this feeling of holding history, through her passion for the pottery of the Anazasi or Ancestral Puebloans, whose creativity lies in pieces all over the landscape of the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. Walk in the desert here and you will find the scattered remnants of the daily lives of ancient people. “My interest in Anasazi pottery began”, Kelly explained, “with…a love and connection to the Southwest desert. I fell in love with the pottery because I fell in love with the canyons, the desert varnish and the red rock cliffs.”

Beginning her connection to the land through a job with a wilderness survival program for troubled youth in Arizona, her passion for the relics of a people who have long left that area grew organically into the artistic practice Kelly is now known so well for – aesthetically beautiful, but also functional pottery that is authentic and carries the spirit of native people and their landscapes in every curve and decorative pattern. As Kelly says, “primitive pottery is always determined by the landscape and the materials found there.”

I first encountered Kelly’s work in a YouTube documentary by filmmaker Steve Olpin, that had me captivated from the start. Watching Kelly source clay from the land, process it, working it by hand with such care and focus, seeing the firing process and the finished vessels - there was something magical about how connected she was to the earth and the artistic possibilities it held for her.

Discovering that her artistic practice, much in the way of an experimental archaeologist, aims to follow the footsteps of the Ancestral Puebloan people and their creativity gave it that extra edge of mystery – I wanted to know more!

Talking with her, Kelly reveals to me that her aim has always been to create pottery that has the look, feel, intention, and crucially, is made using the same techniques as those of the largest southwestern prehistoric group, known as Ancestral Puebloan, The Ancient Ones, or, more commonly but controversially Anasazi.

The Ancestral Puebloan were peaceful farmers who lived in an area of the US now known as Four Corners, where the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet, from around AD 200 until AD 1300 when they migrated from their homes, leaving behind them the artefacts that still lie intact on the desert sands. Finding these clay memories that spoke to Kelly of lives once lived, lit the fire of inspiration in her, fuelling her desire to learn how to create pottery in the way they did, with the materials and processes they used, out in the landscape they called home 18

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for so long.

Kelly’s connection to the landscape and its history is so clear to see in both her work and her artistic processes, which are like that of an Experimental Archaeologist. “In the desert”, she tells me, “the distant past feels very close. As I… found dwellings, pottery sherds and broken arrowheads I felt the spirits of those who built and created them very close. I was always amazed by the pottery and wondered how they were able to make such beautiful works of art in such a harsh environment.”

Learning the skills of a people who aren’t here to teach you is not an easy task, and Kelly found that whilst there were lots of people who had tried their hand at this type of pottery, including some native people, and lots of books, online resources and informal skillshare gatherings to develop her skills, it was not until she met John Olsen, from Boulder Outdoor Survival School, that she was able to put her growing skills in Ancestral Puebloan style pottery truly into practice. Building her skills, like building her pots, has taken much patience and commitment, and has felt at times a wild and solitary journey. But Kelly reflects: “I’ve realised… what I love about this style of pottery is the wildness of it, the authenticity. Hand built pottery is not perfectly symmetrical and has a lot of character.” Though Kelly has not found any formal cultural organisations to work with, she has attended earthskills gatherings, finding kindred spirits in those also in attendance. There is a growing movement of people looking for ways to connect with the earth and to live sustainably in ways that don’t harm the earth – making pottery in this wild way has great appeal to many on this journey.

The whole process fascinates me – watching Kelly take wild clay from the earth, work it and process it from handfuls of dust to workable clay, seeing her coil long ropes of clay that suddenly become vessels, is fascinating to watch. The passion Kelly has for it is so evident - her soul in each pot, and each pot a story to tell.

Kelly begins her unique pot making process by collecting wild clay from the earth, processing it by soaking it in water and selecting the finer layers for her work. She collects temper – using ground pot sherds or rocks, adding it to the clay by kneading it in. Kelly’s pots are hand built using the “coil and scrape” or slab method, then dried and coated with several layers of white coloured slip. Kelly chooses this so that her black hand-painted designs have a good contrasting background. Burnishing is done with a polished stone, picked up from the landscape where she is working, then Kelly paints her pots with a paint she makes from Cleome lutea, (Yellow Rocky Mountain Bee Plant), a brush she makes by stripping the flesh from Yucca leaves and designs inspired by original Ancestral Puebloan pots found in museums and history books. Perhaps the most magical part of the process is the

Creating pottery where every single piece is utterly unique, carrying its own character and story is Kelly’s goal, but the part of the process she tells me she enjoys the most is the painting. “Painting”, she says, “takes a fairly plain pot and transforms it into a work of art and something that is exclusively human. To me this gives a pot life, taking a functional object and breathing a soul into it.”

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firing, which is done in an Ancestral Puebloan style trench kiln and can take from 3-4 hours. Setting her pots into the ground to fire them seems very fitting – a return, albeit temporarily, to the earth for their transformation into usable vessels which, at the end of their life, can be once again returned to the earth.

During our conversation, we mulled over the use of the word “primitive” in relation to crafts like hers, which encompass all the skills of a people long gone from the wild places where she works. There are those who feel that the word does not do justice to the skilful techniques many crafts people use in their work. About this, Kelly says: “I don’t think the word “primitive” is sufficient [to describe her work] and generally carries too much of a negative feeling.”

Certainly, “primitive” conjures the idea of “simple” craft - easy, unskilled, basic, which all crafts people know is just not the case. Kelly mused: “I like to use the term “earth skills” rather than primitive skills to describe pottery, basketry, fire making, flint knapping, cordage, weaving and so on”.

I think Earth Skills is a perfect way to describe creations that originate from the earth, in both their creators and construction materials.

into – and she is expanding her interest beyond the pottery of the Ancestral Puebloan to look at other cultures, shifting focus to redware and polychromes as well as her black on white designs. “I love what I do” Kelly enthuses, “because it encompasses so much. To me it is a perfect balance of art and science, function and aesthetics, work and play.

There are aspects of geology, chemistry, sculpture, physical labour and intricate design. As well as the need of an understanding of the nature and transformational powers of fire (that is where things really start to seem magical). I don’t think I will ever get tired of it” I think, upon reflection, that perhaps the artist does come first, and archaeologist after – for better or worse, that first burst of wonderous connection when holding a sherd of pot, gives way to the creativity of the craft before anything else. Working out the historical detail, certainly for Kelly, seems to come second. For her, it’s possible that exploring the craft of the Ancestral Puebloan and connecting with their creative spirits through the pottery their hands made will always lead her to her next earth skills adventure in the wild desert landscape that was once their home.

So, what next for Kelly and her pottery? She feels that there are always spaces to learn and grow

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R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.anasazipottery.net Watch her here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_PeaHVcohg 21

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Recl aiming Stone And Sl ate:

the Unusual Journey of a S cientist Turned Artist Interview by NSN Team Photography by Martin Wilson When we think about materials being diverted from the landfill, how many of us would mention slate and stones? Martin of Hatch, Burn, Carve is a scientist turned self-taught artist who makes beautiful pieces using slate and rotary carving tools. A stone collector and nature lover, Martin got into stone carving by chance, when he was gifted an old carving tool and yearned to make his designs long-lasting.

Hi Martin, to begin with, could you tell us something about yourself and the place you live in Scotland?

whilst working as a scientist. From a young age I became fascinated with Celtic and Pictish designs and carvings and started to draw these, but I always yearned to create something more permanent. My Dad gave me an old rotary carving tool and as I had some roof slates lying around, I thought I would give it a try.

I am entirely self-taught and, whilst carving as a hobby, I learnt my craft through much trial and error. Since I established Hatch, Burn, Carve in 2013, I have continually problem solved and streamlined my work which is undoubtedly helped by my scientific way of thinking! I’ve not gone down the traditional path of purely carving with hammer and chisel, but then, I’ve never been drawn to the traditional pathways in life!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a beachcomber and stone collector. I then became interested in megalithic monuments and the marks made in stone by people over the centuries, from ancient rock art to obscure and hidden symbols. For me, stone has a resonance and a timeless, tactile quality.

Sure, my name’s Martin Wilson, I’m 49 and, until 2012, I was working as a full-time research scientist. During this time I worked in various fields and gained a PhD in Environmental Toxicology. However, after 20 years of short-term contracts and a number of redundancies, I became a freelance science writer/editor/mentor and combined what was then my hobby of stone carving into my self-employment (no, there’s no connection!) It’s very much a portfolio career - some days I can be carving slate whilst other days I can be writing or editing highly technical microscopy articles. I live in a small town in the Scottish Borders with my wife, our children, dog and chickens. It’s a beautiful part of the world, nestled in the hills, with miles and miles of forests just a few minutes’ walk from our house.

How did you learn to work with stone and slate?

It began as a hobby really and I started carving slate

‘Ostara’ Reclaimed Cornish roof slate (approximately 300 years old, 40 x 25 cm). Cup and ring markings based on the constellations of Leo and Virgo, two constellations visible at the Northern Hemisphere horizon during spring.

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Tell us a little bit more about the materials you use in your work, where do you source stones and slate?

go down the more traditional route, then there are plenty of places and organisations that offer courses on carving stone with hammer and chisel. Of course, you can always teach yourself!

I would thoroughly recommend (or actually insist) that respiratory protection is used as well as eye and ear protection. You don’t want to be breathing in stone dust, or risk getting chips in your eyes.

Practically all the materials I use are reclaimed, recycled or found (although I do still use new slate if specified by a customer). Once people heard I was carving slate and stone, I was pleasantly surprised by the offers of material and it would seem that many of us have piles of disused slate at the bottom of the garden! In addition, I have collected slate from a wide range of origins such as snooker/pool table bases, fire surrounds, hearth stones and so on. There are also many disused slate quarries dotted around the countryside that still contain material suitable for carving.

For carving relatively small natural stones, I respectfully and carefully collect these on my travels around the UK from beaches and rivers stretching from Cornwall to the west coast of Scotland. Cornwall also has some great reclamation yards that specialise in slate.

Some of my customers have also supplied the material for their pieces such as stone and slate with sentimental or historical value. Two examples that spring to mind are a slate presentation plaque I made for the committee at St Margaret’s Chapel (the oldest building in Edinburgh) and a sandstone farm sign made from an old horse gravestone.

You told me previously that you also carve and sell Buddhist and Sanskrit mantra stones, tell me a bit more about this… do you have a spiritual connection or otherwise, what appeals to you about creating mantra stones?

There have always been Buddha statues in the houses I’ve lived in and I guess this has permeated into my psyche over the years. I wouldn’t say I was a strictly practising Buddhist, nor do I follow a particular path, but I am very much drawn to the philosophy of Buddhism.

I guess I’m lucky in that Kagyu Samye Ling (the largest Tibetan Buddhist centre in Western Europe) is relatively near to where we live. I’ve visited it on many occasions for courses, to meditate in the temples, or just to wander around the gardens. On one such visit, I got chatting with the monk who runs the shop and she was keen to stock some of my pieces.

From the initial small batch of stones, the demand grew rapidly and I supply them with a large number of pieces every year. I’m now the only person in the UK who carves and sells Buddhist and Sanskrit mantra stones and last year I started to supply Kagyu Samye Dzong and Jamyang Buddhist Centre, both in London. I experience a great deal of serenity when creating mantra stones and I often repeat the mantra over and over in my head as I’m carving. It is a real privilege to create these sacred stones.

What about the tools for this art? What are the essential tools and skills required by someone who’d like to start carving stone?

My main tool is a Foredom Power Carver, but I also use Dremel and Proxxon rotary carvers for smaller, less demanding work. In addition I have a range of slate/stone cutting tools from slate axes to angle grinders and stone saws. And, of course, I also use traditional dummy mallets and stone carving chisels.

The essential skills? Patience, lots and lots of patience! It also helps to have a steady hand and a critical eye for detail. If anyone wanted to start out carving slate in the method I do, all you would really need is a rotary carver with a small range of carving burrs. You can pick up carvers relatively cheaply and do worse than starting with something like a Dremel 3000 which is good for the hobby carver. If someone wanted to

What connection do you see between your work as a stone carver and the preservation of the environment? How do you try to minimise your impact as an artist and how do you see yourself sending a message about environmental sustainability through your work?

The most obvious connection between my work and 23

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preserving our environment would be the fact that I use reclaimed materials whenever possible. I’ll try to save as much slate as I am offered from ending up in landfill (although our garden now resembles a slaters yard!). I’ve taken old snooker table bases and turned them into gravestones, made everything from artwork to coasters and placemats from waste roof slates, and created garden installations from reclaimed slate cladding.

If I find I have slate that isn’t suitable for carving due to flaking or cracking, then I’ll offer it for use as garden paths or in borders. I also make pyramid sculptures from such roof slates and this is something that anyone can do - just start with a large square of slate and work upwards!

My message about environmental sustainability would be that we are too quick to dismiss and disregard ‘waste’ materials and, with time and skill, these can be saved from the dump or from landfill sites and turned into something that is either practical, beautiful or both.

I’d like to ask you a little bit more about the tradition of stone carving. How many people do it today in the UK? Is it a craft at risk of extinction?

I wouldn’t say it’s a lost tradition as there are a large number highly skilled and very creative stone carvers working in the UK today. I don’t know of any other stone carvers who primarily use rotary carving tools in this country (although I’m sure they are out there!) I guess the introduction of CNC stone carvers and engravers has brought cheaper options to the market for the likes of house signs, but there are still those who appreciate the time and skill that goes into making a truly handcrafted piece.

Tell us more about the artists’ collectives and associations you belong to, what’s the purpose of these collectives and what do you do as a member?

I am a member of the creative team at Talliston House and Gardens (‘Britain’s Most Extraordinary Home’) and a member of ‘Animus- Art for the World’s Soul’ artist collective. Both of these invitations came about through (and continue to offer up) intriguing, fateful and weird occurrences.

Talliston is a magical place - a three bedroom, ex-council house in Essex that has been transformed over 25 years into a wonderland, a project about time and place. I would urge anyone to visit this place during their tours as photographs don’t do it justice (as we found out when we visited last year).

John Trevillion, the person behind Talliston, phoned me one day as he had seen my work online and was looking for a stone carver to make Talliston talisman labyrinths. The same labyrinth design from Rocky Valley in Cornwall that my wife and I had visited in the first days we met, the same carving I had recreated for her on a large piece of reclaimed slate (that has never been shared online!) So I regularly make these slate labyrinth plaques for them to sell and last year I was commissioned to make a set of three Sanskrit stones that are now in the Cambodian Treehouse Sanctuary at the very top of Talliston House. The whole process of creating these stones was one of liminality and timelessness and, if you are permitted to hold them, you will see they were carved in 1965, four years before I was born.

I was travelling to Cornwall after dropping off a batch of mantra stones at Samye Ling and saw a poster advertising an exhibition by the Animus collective. I was curious and made a mental note to find out more. However, before I got the chance, I was contacted by them a few days later and invited to join! The Animus collective encompasses musicians, poets and artists working in a wide range of mediums and stages regular exhibitions and events. I help to promote any events through my social media channels and had a number of pieces in one of their exhibitions last year.

IN THE PICTURES ‘Bronze, Bone and Silence’ Reclaimed slate hearth stone, Cornish beach stones, reclaimed wood. 37.2 x 23.1 x 17.0 cm (dimensions correspond to the Golden Ratio/Phi). A short cist burial in a stone setting. The stones are each carved with cup and ring markings based on prominent constellations seen in the skies above Scotland during the four seasons (Orion in Winter, Leo in Spring, Cygnus in Summer and Perseus in Autumn). (Page 25) ‘Talliston Sanskrit Stones’ Carved from natural Cornish beach stones, each one approximately 25 cm. Commissioned by Talliston House & Gardens and on display in the Cambodian Treehouse Sanctuary. (Page 26)

R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.hatchburnandcarve.wordpress.com Facebook: @hatchburnandcarve Instagram and Twitter: @hatchburncarve

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Mushro oms and drag onf lies: The Art of Up cycling Metal with Old Repurp osed To ols Interview by NSN Team Photography by Feral Metal by Brett James Brett is a UK-based artist who works with recycled metal. If you came across his artwork at a fair or in a gallery or craft shop, you’d definitely stop to look at it closely. Many of his creations are inspired by nature: dragonflies, mushrooms, flowers, seashells... He also collects and up-cycles old saws into detailed works of art inspired by rural sceneries. Brett also takes commissions from all over the world and is happy to take on different projects inspired by subjects other than nature. So get in touch with him if you’d like something especially made for you, he can be found online or at fairs across the North East of England.

Hi Brett, please tell us something about your background and your professional formation.

I’ve always been inventive. I struggled academically at school with dyslexia so it was easy to follow the creative route as ideas came easy to me. Studying photography and fine art led to working as a photographer and traveling a lot. Later, I went back to university and studied engineering, mainly to prove that I could overcome my disability and prove something to myself. Life is about challenges, is it not? I’ve always pushed myself and challenged my

anxieties.

I worked as a Design Engineer for over ten years but always felt like a round peg in a square hole. When I became redundant, I started making mushroom sculptures and from there it grew quickly into self employment in a creative field again. The round peg fitted the round hole and it felt right.

Incredibly rewarding, exciting and felt that I was in control of my own destiny.

How did you learn to work with metal?

I’ve always been mechanically minded, I rebuilt and customised motorbikes as a hobby, learned welding and fabrication techniques.

Which tools are essential to work with metal?

I could give you a long list of tools that I use, some I use more often than others. You need to be able to cut and join metal, often I use a welder and angle grinder. But I also use nibblers, plasma cutters, files and wire brushes.

Tell us a bit more about repurposing - why do you do it, what’s people reaction when they see your work?

When people come to my stall and see the reused tools, it often triggers memories of when lost family members would have used them. In the past, they remember the times when things would have been fixed and repaired in the home. The shoes that were repaired, the saws that were resharpened and reused. By having repurposed tools on show in the home it gives them a connection to family, and it’s great to hear the stories from a time not so long ago when it was common to reuse and repair.

Which types of metal do you use and why did you opt to recycle instead of using new materials?

I use recycled mainly ferrous metals. Why use new materials when you can reuse what’s in your personal environment?

It seems logical to me... I collect interesting things like a magpie.

How do you source the metal you use in your artwork?

Would you be able to include examples of how and where you sourced materials for specific projects?

Hand cut saw

I really like repurposing old tools, for example lots of old wooden handled saws get scrapped because the skill to sharpen them has been lost by many and it’s easy to buy a plastic handled saw cheaply. But the old tools were 25

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special, often handmade and designed with more than just functionality in mind. Beautiful to look at and fitted the hand perfectly. Many were works of art in their own right.

You can pick up used tools at car boot sales and through local free ads. Old spanners and screwdrivers are good to be made into coat hooks. Old saws and other tools are often handed to me by people I meet who want to see them reused, they see what I create and realise that there are other options available than being scrapped. It’s all about the ideas. Think, how can something be reused in a new way before you bin it?

I’d like to ask you about the nature subjects of your work, why do you choose them and where do you get your inspiration?

I’m greatly influenced by nature, my local area has the seashore, moors and I’m surrounded by woodland. I try to celebrate this beauty by recreating this in my work, making flowers, mushrooms, bulrushes and insects.

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Everl asting flowers: a tutori al By Bret t Jame s My girlfriend was in hospital and I wanted to take her some flowers. As real flowers are not allowed I came up with the idea of forever living flowers.

Step 1: From your aluminium can, cut out a flower

and bend one end over about an inch.

shape using scissors. I like to use five petals but any shape will work.

Step 4: After choosing your button (the hardest part) place the wire through the button holes and into the flower head.

Step 2: Now squeeze the ends of each petal to give

them more life, and poke a hole in the centre of the flower head. Be careful to keep fingers out of the way.

Step 5: Turning the flower head over, thread another

button over the wire, using pliers to secure in place by a twisting motion. Why not make a bunch? They require no weeding, no watering and last forever!

Step 3: Take a piece of wire (I like to recycle the metal ties from the top of potato sacks, but most wire is ok)

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Kufic Script, Paper and Ink: In Search of Beauty From the Past to the Present Interview by NSN Team Photography by Joumana Medlej Joumana’s artistic journey is fascinating. It is fascinating because she actively researches old artistic traditions and conceptions of Beauty to bring them back to life however, as you can clearly see from her work, she also adapts this classic technique to her own contemporary style. Traditionally trained as a calligrapher in Kufic script in Lebanon, she now makes geographic mandalas with this script, which has now become inseparable to her artistic identity. She does not experiment solely with graphics though, she uses and gathers materials to make inks and brushes too. We are extremely grateful to a reader of No Serial Number Magazine for introducing us to Joumana’s work, please continue sending your ideas and suggestions to editorial@noserialnumber.org

Hi Joumana, thanks for agreeing to this interview.

First, could you tell us something about your and your background?

slow process of discovery?

I first discovered natural colours in a course where we learned to extract pigments just like the medieval masters did: grinding and washing rocks such as malachite and cinnabar, as well as certain plants like madder. When I moved to where I live now, on the edge of Epping Forest, I felt an irresistible need to connect with the land and started taking frequent walks, and took up foraging. One day by chance I found many oak galls. I had never seen them in the wild before but I knew how to make ink from them, and on the same walk I found several good quality quills by the pond: the writing medium and writing tools in the same place. That’s when I realised that I could forage for art as well as food!

I’m from Lebanon where I spent all my life before moving to London a few years ago. I had a diverse creative career including graphic design, animation, illustration, games, comic books, but since I relocated my focus has been on my Kufic-based art, Kufic being the first Arabic calligraphic script.

How was your journey to calligraphy, when did you get interested in this art and how?

It was very unexpected and not at all something I had planned. One of my university teachers, a master calligrapher who is highly esteemed in Lebanon, asked me to work with him as his assistant. He must have seen something in me I didn’t know was there at the time. It was a great honour so I accepted, and after several years of hands-on work together, I realised the Kufic script had become a part of me and that it was going to be “my thing” from then on. I had received a traditional transmission without realising it.

In one of your recent blog articles you write, ‘It really tickles me to be able to make both ink and writing implement from “waste” picked up in the same place, a short walk from home.’ When did you first start looking at your local environment as a source of art materials? Was it something you knew you could do from the beginning or a

I saw that you aim to live plastic-free; do you see that at times your life as an artist clashes with your drive to live a low-impact life or do these two aspects of your life go in harmony? What are the challenges of making eco-friendly art?

In my experience it truly is easier to be plastic-free (or nearly; my plastic consumption is now around 10% of what it used to be) in my personal life, which is a good thing because I also noticed that there is far more potential waste there than in my professional life. But although I talk a lot about the plastic, since it’s such a huge problem, I’m always looking at sustainability as a whole. How are my materials made? What am I putting into the water when I use them? And even, are natural pigments always necessarily better than synthetic, given some of them need to be mined somewhere? I don’t necessarily have answers and am not always able to do without the offensive product, but it’s important to remain aware, and I can make a big difference in my practice, both materially and ethically, so that yes, both aspects of my life are in harmony. Materially, I begin by taking good care of my tools; I never buy anything cheap out of convenience, thinking I’ll dispose of it and buy another. I bought my basic tools in 1997 and they’re good for another twenty years. I switched my packing materials, normally a major source of waste, to entirely biodegradable ones (especially tape) and I make the boxes or mailers myself from reclaimed cardboard. I’m also moving away from acrylics, and sticking to watercolour and homemade media such as egg tempera. Ethically, I am 29

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the Lebanese mountains. Earth colours like these are ironbased, so you’re working with that mineral (and the planet Mars, according to tradition). From plants, I extracted yellow from goldenrod and yarrow, amazing purples from blackberry and sloes, brown from onion skins, … They are exciting colours but ephemeral. And of course black from oak galls, which is one of the oldest known ways to make ink, and the traditional medium for calligraphy.

mindful of what I put out in the world, and being an artist is an advantage here. Since I must use resources and have an impact on the world, what I create needs to be worth it.

I have to be able to say “The time and life force I spent on that piece was well-spent and I wouldn’t want to have spent it on anything else.” If I don’t feel that way, how can I justify spending the planet’s life force on it? These are my own challenges, but my artistic practice is pretty traditional to begin with. Other artists whose work requires highly synthetic or toxic substances will have different ones and have to find their own solutions.

Do you use any specific paper for your calligraphy? Have you ever tried to make your own? What are the most ecofriendly options available?

I use a number of different papers, depending on what I’m making, Traditional calligraphy requires very specific smooth paper, or you have to size the paper with gelatin, burnish it and then leave it to cure for a year or two, which is not practical. The kind of work I do relies mostly on hot-pressed watercolour paper. I don’t make my own paper for this kind of work because achieving a suitable surface would be such a ridiculously tedious process. I will get into it at some point as it’s a prime candidate for local materials, but in this case the paper will be in itself the final product, and not destined to be painted on.

Paper means trees, there’s no real way around it, though maybe bamboo paper can change the scene at some point.

So I don’t take it for granted. It’s a beautiful and noble material and I make sure to always honour it and not to waste it. For the best eco-friendly options, look for paper made from managed forests and made without the use of chlorine bleach. You can also find out about mills in your own country

I saw in your blog that you like ‘foraging for colours’, tell us a little bit about the process. What colours have you been able to make and from which botanical or mineral materials?

It’s such an engrossing process! I can make a lot of colours, but the real question is, which ones are suitable for use in art, because few of them are permanent or lightfast. And of those, most are suitable to dye fabric but not for use on paper. I’m not discovering anything new, every possible natural material has been tried and tested by artists since prehistory, but you learn a lot when you repeat the experiments yourself.

Speaking only of foraged materials (as opposed to buying specific minerals, which I also do), the easiest and most reliable colours I have made are from rocks I came across during nature walks. I have a beautiful orange-red I call Theydon Red, after the place I found it, and lovely pinks from

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or area, you may discover artisanal papermakers with a small production, that’s always more sustainable.

You mention in your blog that you’re inspired by Kufic script from the 7th century. What do we know about the techniques and materials from that era? Do you seek to emulate those techniques and source similar materials or you like to experiment with the new?

I’m glad you ask! We know quite a lot about the techniques and materials, though one has to dig up the info from scholarly volumes, and it’s part of my work to piece it all together in an accessible way so this knowledge can be put into practice again. The materials are by and large the same as those used in the medieval West: the same pigments (eg lamp black, vermillion, lapis), in a gum Arabic binder, which is what we now call watercolour, plus the ever-present oak gall ink, and gold or silver applied as leaf or ground into a paint.

I’m familiar with all of them and can make many of them (a few are highly toxic so I wouldn’t try to make them myself, instead I buy them in pigment form), and they constitute my palette of choice. But there are various considerations that make experimenting inevitable. For instance, Kufic was written on sheepskin parchment. I almost never use it, though it’s very beautiful, and have to find the right kind of paper instead, and adapt the technique to a different material. Also, outside my research and teaching, my art itself is not traditional, I mostly create mandalas out of constructed Kufic and that is a completely contemporary practice closer to abstract painting than calligraphy. So to return to your question, I’m no luddite: I try every new art or craft material I come across (provided it’s not shamefully un-ecological), and even techniques such as laser-cutting. My computer is one of my most valuable tools, and giclée printing is absolutely central to offering prints of my originals. But it’s my preference to return to traditional materials, with the extra edge of everything I learned from modern materials, their advantages and also their limitations.

You don’t fully appreciate how delightful egg tempera is unless you’re used to how dead acrylic is. The experience of making art with natural media, especially when you’ve harvested them yourself, is incomparable, there’s a joy and also a peace, a sense that you are part of the natural order of things–working with the Earth instead of despite her.

What exactly inspires you like about the Kufic script? Does it give you that freedom to explore abstract or geometric art forms?

Kufic is the early tradition of Arabic calligraphy and is a family of scripts, which in itself shows how versatile it is. It’s an incredibly special script, though I usually fail at explaining why exactly. It was designed to be beautiful in the classical sense, with a set of proportions and a small number of geometric shapes, because the classical idea of beauty (which is shared by Islam) is that Beauty is a manifestation of Truth, and to contemplate it brings you closer to the Divine.

The importance of beauty lives on in the later tradition of calligraphy, but the relationship of Kufic with geometry is unique. It is what allows me to manipulate words into geometric mandalas that have a more powerful impact than anything figurative I could come up with. I guess it’s because there is no image – images bring up associations, iconography, symbolism – just the pure energy of the word going straight to the heart without going through the mind.

You don’t think about it, you just feel it. I do more illustrative work on the side, mostly for my pleasure, but I tried moving away from Kufic for a while and couldn’t – everything else felt half-baked in comparison.

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IN THE PICTURES PAGE 28 - The Hoopoe. In a one-off series inspired by the Sufi poem ‘The Conference of the Birds’, I brought together Arabic calligraphy, illustration and Western manuscript illumination. Oak gall ink was laid down first for blacks and greys, followed by mineral pigments in egg tempera, finishing with gold leaf.

TOP RIGHT PAGE 29 - Putting the finishing touches on one of my larger pieces, The Cloud.

BOTTOM LEFT PAGE 29 - Process shot of a calligraphic piece made with the traditional tools of reed pen and oak gall ink.

TOP LEFT PAGE 30 - ‘Mansions of the Moon’: Limited edition artist book depicting the phases of the Moon with their corresponding zodiac signs, constellations and Arabic letters. I find abundant inspiration in medieval Islamic cosmology, and made this piece to feel mysterious like an old manuscript. The original was made using traditional materials, and the edition is giclée-printed then gilded and folded by hand.

TOP RIGHT PAGE 30 - ‘Reverence for the Land’, mineral pigments in egg tempera medium and gold leaf on paper. For this piece I used layers of two different pigments from rocks I picked up in Britain and Lebanon respectively, the two lands I call home.

BOTTOM PAGE 30 - ‘A Pocketful of Love’: Limited edition artist book celebrating fifteen different Arabic words for ‘love’ with calligraphy, Sufi poetry and my mandalas. When fully opened, the concertina is over 3.5m long.

TOP LEFT PAGE 31 - I keep a record of my colour experiments with various materials. Sloes turned out to be versatile, and make a lovely warm purplish-black ink.

MIDDLE PAGE 31 - I keep a record of my colour experiments with various materials. Birch yields a lovely dye colour and I tried to translate that into an ink, but to no avail.

BOTTOM PAGE 31 - Comparison between three inks made from foraged plant material. Seen on their own they look similar, but placing them sideby-side reveals subtle nuances of warm and cool greys.

RIGHT PAGE 32 - ‘A Year with the Earth: July.’ A different way of bringing nature into my work: For this series I spent a year going for monthly walks, taking photos of natural elements and critters that came my way (without removing them from their environment), and then arranging them in digital compositions around Kufic words. As the year unfolded, the images also mirrored the changing colors and textures of the seasons.

BOTTOM PAGE 32 - ‘A Year with the Earth: January’.

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Tutorial: making oak galls ink Step 1: Gather oak galls. They can be found on oak trees, especially small or sickly ones, all year long, and look like perfectly round balls on the branch. Only gather those that have holes (this means the wasp has hatched), and be careful not to damage the branch. If you don’t live anywhere near oak trees, you can order ground oak galls online, in which case go straight to step 4.

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Step 2: Place the galls on a baking sheet and bake them in a low oven for an hour or so. This is to sterilize them and avoid mould later.

Step 3: Pound the galls in a brass mortar-pestle to break them up roughly.

Step 4: Cover 1 cup galls with 4-5 cups water (or red wine) and leave to soak, covered, 7-12 days, stirring daily. (You can also bring this to a boil for a quick extraction)

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Step 5: Strain the liquid through muslin.

Step 6: Add 2 teaspoons ferrous sulfate (iron mordant) and it will instantly turn black. A more home-grown option is to soak rusty iron nails into the liquid, but in this case they need to be left in for a couple of weeks before it is ready.

Step 7: Strain through double-folded muslin and distribute into small jars. It can now be used, but adding a little gum Arabic (up to 1 tsp gum to 2 tsps ink) improves the flow and adhesion on less absorbent paper.

This ink is thinner than Indian ink but is very long-lasting and waterproof. It can look pale when applied to paper, but contact with oxygen makes it turn deep black before your eyes. It can also be used very diluted for lovely greys.

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The Art of Ross Belton: Exploring Place and the Pursuit of Sustainability Interview by NSN Team Mark Making Tutorial by Ross Belton Photography by Jonathan Dredge @moderneccentrics Ross is an eclectic artist: he works with found objects, foraged materials, natural dyes, fibres, and homemade inks, to name just a few. His work is a journey of self-discovery which encompasses also the natural environment that surrounds him. In his attempts to ‘minimise his artistic footprint’ he has researched and experimented with a wide range of philosophies and techniques.

This is his story.

Hi Ross, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. First, I’d like to ask you, how would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?

I am an exhibiting artist who works with nature in an urban environment. A craftsman maker using found, recycled and redundant materials. Something that is key to my practice is an attempt to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible. I am aware of local and seasonal resources, my work tends to be led by what is available around me.

How did you initially get into art and more specifically into natural dyeing?

I have always been creative. Even as a little boy, I learnt to sew and crochet with my Gran. I studied architecture, worked in art departments for film and TV and finally as a digital graphic designer. Eventually I became disillusioned with the need to constantly retrain in an attempt to keep pace with technology’s continuous advancements. I decided to get back into the slow lane and to pursue a more hands on creative practice.

Inspired by the Boro exhibition at Somerset House in 2014, my first experience of natural dyeing was a shibori and indigo workshop held in Somerset House basement studios.

Following that, I enrolled on ‘Creative and Experimental Textiles’, an evening course at Morley College, which gave me a proper introduction to shibori techniques, indigo dyeing and experimental basketry. I was lucky enough to meet a fantastic tutor and mentor Debby Brown, who would help launch my exploration of traditional techniques with contemporary applications.

She introduced me to How to Wrap Five Eggs: Traditional Japanese Packaging by Hideyuki Oka and this book opened my eyes to the natural resources around me.

I continued to experiment with rust marks and contact printing, and subsequently returned to Morley College to study the Textile Foundation, followed by further two years on the Advanced Textile Workshop. It was here that I met Zoë Burt, who introduced me to the basics of natural dyeing. When I combined my rust and indigo samples with natural dyes my adventure in textile alchemy began. It’s such a small world. When I met Zoë, she was attending Jenny Dean’s Nature Dyeing course at the Ditchling Museum, and now I am lucky enough to be one of the twelve students selected for this year’s course.

Tell us something about the type of art that you do, I was browsing your website and flyers and saw that you work a lot with found objects, I saw also that you make nests and you’re inspired by anthropological engagements with material culture and mythical figures.

A lot of your work, I felt, is also biographical. Tell me more about how you combine all these art forms in your work?

Though I started studying textiles, even my first installation ‘Imperfect Beauty’ at the Morley Gallery consisted of a variety of different 2D and 3D pieces and collections of objects. The majority of my work is now sculptural pieces and installations but it is never a conscious decision. I let the materials speak to me and my work develops as I play and work with the resources.

A piece will very often evolve over weeks and months until it finally reaches its finished state. Sometimes, the exhibition date arrives, and that’s how I know a work is finished.

I have always liked to collect interesting objects and materials, and now they are all potential raw materials for my work. Wunderkammer or Cabinets of Curiosities have always fascinated me and the act of curating or creating groups of objects is something that runs throughout my work. Making new discoveries encourages the viewer to see with fresh eyes, and to recognise connections that they may not have aware of. This act of looking encourages taking pleasure in the small things and pausing to savour a piece allows the object to be fully experienced. All my pieces have their own story to tell.

The act of collecting has pushed my work in all sorts of different ways. When I came across old soldering irons, they prompted me to research traditional crafts and techniques that had become redundant due to technological progress. The loss of these traditional skills led to my 2015 piece ‘Split Traditions’, consisting of a bound and wrapped selection of soldering and metal work tools from the mid 20th century. I thought that they were intriguing objects in themselves with the wear and patina of age only adding to their beauty.

‘Split Traditions’ also illustrates another of my interests - Japanese aesthetics and culture. ‘Wabi Sabi’ is an appreciation of the imperfect that emerged in the 15th century as a reaction to luxuriousness, ornamentation, and rich materials. It is the art of finding beauty in imperfection. ‘Kinsugi’ or ‘golden joinery’ originated in the practice of repairing ceramics, emphasising the

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

repairs with powdered gold or silver added to the laquer.

It now has a much wider influence - nothing is truly broken and the urge to repair or recycle is certainly present in my art. There’s ’simplicity’ to traditional Japanese philosophies, an awareness and appreciation of nature and heritage. The concept of ‘Ma’ is another way of thinking that influences me.

Mies van der Rohe coined the phrase ‘less is more’ but Ma is slightly different. It is the space between objects that allows them to breathe, and I am aware of it all the time. Working with collections, the relationship between objects is crucial for the individual pieces to sit in harmony as a whole.

An African childhood also influences me profoundly, but perhaps on a more subconscious level. And there are distinct overlaps in the concepts of the cultures I have been researching, whether traditional Japanese ways of thinking or African tribes from across the continent - the Dinka, Massai and the people of the Omo Valley East Africa. The concept of identity has also lead me to research Quipu/ Khipu the Peruvian talking knots which is a way of recording numerology. This is something I have explored in my piece ‘In Search of the King of Saxony’, a shaman’s jacket and mantle, which look at personal identity.

I recently realised that I have been recreating the basic African tribal earthen wares or clay bowls I was aware of as a child since I started my artistic journey, with versions of them having been made from wool, builders scrim and even autumn leaves! I think that this stems from the idea of place, which is central to my practice. Sustainability and using local resources (whether discarded or homegrown) is key in trying to minimise my artistic footprint, whilst still engaging the viewer with works of undiscovered or transient beauty.

The concept of place, the bi-products of eco dyeing and my fixation with craftsmen’s tools has led to the development

of a group of work ‘Artefacts’. which has evolved into ‘nest’, ‘implements’ and ‘adornment’, created with found objects and natural foliage, both homegrown and gathered along the canal towpath. These works have more recently branched out into a series of fetish figures and talisman charms.

Working with found objects, recycled materials, vintage linens, sea salvage and redundant stock frees me from having preconceived notions of what a piece of work is going to be. I hope my work reflects the new understanding gathered from working with these unexpected resources. Sometimes it’s back to front - I recently started experimenting with New Zealand flax, which now grows in abundance in central London, before realising it was traditionally used by the Maori for home wares and a fibre source.

Another concept that is very important to me is exploring women’s place in society. Women in western, as well as traditional cultures are still treated as second-class citizens their relative invisibility, a lack of acknowledgement and credit for their achievements shockingly continues to this day. On a more conceptual level, I am investigating the portrayal of time, through collections of objects as disparate as rubber bands, orchid flowers and bottle tops.

It will come as no surprise that I have also gravitated to exploring and experimenting with eco-printing and natural dyes, which constantly produces startling and unpredictable results.

Which artists or artistic movements have inspired you and still inspire you today? Do you think you belong or are influenced by a particular artistic tradition from the past?

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using a myriad of materials including lead, zinc, broken glass, plants, fabric and photos. In some ways his rooms lead back directly to the original Wunderkammer. The surfaces textures he produces are entrancing, similar to the flaking textures on the monumental rusting structures of Richard Serra, another artistic influence. And I haven’t even mentioned Louise Bourgoise…

I am interested in particular about your experiments with inks. Which natural materials have you used to make inks so far? Which ones would you like to experiment with in the future?

Like so many thing in life I stumbled across natural inks by accident. My first homemade ink was the result of a eucalyptus and iron dye pot that dried out. As an experiment, I scraped out the pot and then rehydrated the residual powder to see what happened. The black solution dried to give me a lighter charcoal colour, and this sparked my interest in creating my own colour.

My homemade inks are a tool I use in mark making. In my pursuit of sustainability and my desire to use locally sourced materials, I am always trying to get the most out of my resources; so to start with, most of the colours I created were from exhausted dye baths.

A wonderful patron of mine, Cherry Taylor, was kind enough to send me some oak galls she’d collected on one of her walks. She is a hugely generous supplier of foraged materials.

This was the first time that I’d had a traditional resource for making ink. Logwood, gall and walnut have traditionally been used to create inks since the Middle Ages, with iron gall being the predominant ink used until the invention of chemical replacements in the later half of the 20th century.

Iron gall is the most colourfast of the natural inks, and darkens with time due to the oxidation of the iron. It was used in many of our most treasured artefacts and documents such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, Beowulf and the Magna Carta.

There are many different types of natural ink to make at home. Any foliage can be processed into ink, though they are not all colourfast or permanent like the shop bought inks most of us are used to. Turmeric, irises, lichens, bark and summer berries can all be used to create natural colours.

These colours may change and develop over time, but this is part of the fun of using ‘living’ natural colours.

I have always loved the work of the ‘land artists’ such as Andy Goldsworthy. The beauty of what he manages to create with natural materials is so inspiring, and the transience of some of his pieces is very liberating. We are almost hardwired to think of art as a commodity, where as the true meaning is in the experience. The first time I encountered his art in person was ‘Midsummer Snowballs’. The wonder of watching these giant, incongruous snowballs melt away to reveal their contents (twigs and branches, farm machinery, barbed wire and cattle hair from his Dumfriesshire home) was a unique experience. We had stumbled across them by accident and our first reaction was WTF, followed by awe, contemplation and reflection.

Another significant piece, which I admire, is ‘Ash Dome’

by David Nash. It is an almost unique example of man manipulating nature for beauty, without any harm to the surrounding countryside. I would love to visit the piece, but unfortunately the geographical whereabouts are secret, for obvious reasons.

Why did you decide to make homemade brushes and what do you make them with?

What ever I have lying around basically… I’m always on the lookout for interesting objects and foliage to use. When I visit the coast sea salvage is perfect. Refuse and what you throw away is a good place to start looking for the raw materials for your brushes - onion bags, recycled plastics, dried garden cuttings have all proved great raw materials.

My natural dyeing by-products give me a continuous supply of resources to be repurposed. Finding a way of using these resources led to the development of the ‘artefact’ group of work, an ongoing series that is still evolving today. Funnily enough, it was the brushes and not the ink that I developed first. We’re all familiar with normal brushes; we hold them and use them without even thinking about it. Creating your own brushes and using unusual objects can help free us from traditional ways of working. By making your own brushes you’re creating tools that are unpredictable producing random and unexpected results. It’s much more difficult to plan when you’ve no idea what marks your implement is going to produce. It’s this aspect of mark making with these tools that is so liberating.

Mona Hatoum is an artist my partner introduced me too, and her retrospective at the Tate was encouraging and reassuring to me –experimentation and the use of everyday objects to create art is completely valid. Her retrospective gave me confidence because there are more people out there like me! It gave me licence to pursue some of my more ‘out there’ propositions. Cornelia Parker is another artist whom I am drawn to; her work is surprising, often beautiful and consistently thought provoking all at the same time.

Anslem Keifer’s work is another inspiration. His show ‘Walhalla’ at the White Cube was a wonderful combination of vast canvases, huge vitrines, installations and sculptures

How different is it to use homemade brushes instead of shop bought ones? What are the challenges and benefits?

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The brushes I make are not really meant for painting with oils or watercolours. They are far more experimental. As artists, we draw on our experience and practice to produce work.

A constant danger is that we settle into our ‘comfort zone’, creating work that doesn’t challenge or stretch us in any way, leading to a lack of growth and development in our art. There are many mark making exercises we can do to challenge the way we work on a much more fundamental level.

Once you’ve created your new ‘brush’, think about how you are holding it. A rose stem, gnarled twig or a long branch held at the end will produce very different marks compared to holding it in the traditional way.

A good exercise is to create five different drawings holding your implement in five different ways. Use your full arm, with large gestural strokes rather than moving simply from the wrist. Other freeing exercises include holding your brush in your ‘wrong’ hand, creating timed drawings, cross hatching experiments or making different sized works using the same implement. Any of these mark-making exercises can be done with a whole variety of different materials.

One thing that becomes clear is that each one of us has a distinct signature to our mark making, and the more you experiment, the more comfortable you will be freeing yourself from self imposed constraints.

materials speak to me in different ways, and as I experiment with them they often lead me in new directions. It is a slow and unpredictable process.

Do you feel you have a different type of emotional response when you work with materials that homemade and found?

Do you think using natural materials and making your own can be in some way therapeutic?

IN THE PICTURES

Yes, very much so. I started my journey as an artist in 2014 as a way of improving my quality of life and wellbeing; not realising how important creative adult education is as a health and community resource.

Garden Museum Curiosities (2017) A contemporary working of mythical fetish figures, talisman and amulet charms, using resources from my daily life and found objects along the towpath.

Media: Recycled and found objects, animal bones, naturally dyed and eco-printed silk and cotton, plant stems and roots Hand dyed all natural colour; red onions skins, rusted metal, indigo and eucalyptus. Page 34 & 35.

I find my work has helped me through some difficult times and continues to challenge, inspire and develop my confidence as an artist. And the perpetual search for new materials means that I constantly have to re-evaluate what I can use and what I can produce.

Select Festival Headdress Shop Trail (Prize Winner) Inspired by the Karo people of the Omo Valley Ethiopia, these mythical urban characters were created with the bounty gathered and collected along City Basin towpath London.

Hunter: Eucalyptus branch and sycamore leaves, bound with New Zealand flax & recycled rusty wire.

Soothsayer: Recycled fishing net, rusted ring and tin pulls, rib bones, gathered foliage; pine twigs and hydrangea blooms, recycled rusty fence finial and crochet recycled rusty wire.

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How do you make sure to keep your art as natural and environmentally sustainable as possible?

I don’t buy anything if at all possible, and I work with what I have. I search out waste products and redundant stock that I can re-imagine and repurpose. These unconventional

Hope (2015) Selected for Inspired By the V&A These figures pay homage to the ghosts of ‘fallen’ women, highlighting the issue of female suicide, both in the victorian era and through to today. I was inspired by the wrapped cloak and layered clothes ‘binding’ the young woman and her child together, as portrayed in the etching ‘The Bridge of Sighs’ by Millais. Recycled fabric, Rust printed, cyanotype birch bark, clay pipes, rusted wire. Page 37.

Nest (2017) The city is home for a variety of wildlife and impossible creatures, who use locally found materials, often discarded, to create these structures for shelter, courtship and a home.

Local foliage: Home grown cannellini beans.

Page 38 bottom left.

Specimen Case (2015) This piece pays homage to the specimen cases at the Pitt River Museum. Recycled Wooden box, various rusted objects, wrapped and bound, with silk, wire, machine knitted lambs wool and hand dyed and fringed cotton. Page 38 top right.

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Mark Making Tutorial with Natural Ink and Homemade Brushes

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With natural resources so many factors can influence your results; where the materials were grown, the climate, the soil, the time of year they were harvested and even your water has many permutations. This tutorial is based on my personal experiments and the techniques I’ve developed through some research but mostly trial and error.

01 Natural Ingredients Any natural materials can be used to make ink although not all of them will be lightfast. For the purpose of mark making, this isn’t a problem. If you want to create finished artwork consider using one of the more traditional ingredients such as oak galls, logwood or walnut hulls, which we know to be lightfast. I had a windfall of fresh avocado pits, so I’ve included them because of the colour they produce. They don’t have the same fastness as the walnut hulls, but do work well for mark making exercises.

02 Essentials A stainless steel or enameled pot, tongs and spoon (wood or stainless steel) and a fine stainless steel sieve or coffee filters.

DO NOT use any of your utensils for cooking.

Modifiers: vinegar, iron (I try not to use any toxic chemicals so I make my own iron water) and washing soda (sodium carbonate).

Thickener: gum Arabica.

Preservers: cloves or thyme oil.

03 Preparing the ink Chop your ingredients as small as possible. The more surface area you create, the more colour can be extracted.

The walnut hulls came finely chopped so I used a gauze bag to create a ‘tea bag’. This helps keep the small particles together and makes it easier when you’re staining later. I chopped the avocado pits finely, make sure you’ve cleaned any avocado flesh from the pits to prevent a browning of the dye.

Cover with water, the water can affect the colour. Rain or distilled is best.

Gently heat and simmer. Normally about an hour, the longer you leave it the more colour can be extracted.

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04 Colour testing I use strips of cartridge paper to test the colour, usually at 15 or 30 minute intervals, this is just an indicator of how your colour is progressing.

The hulls produced a rich sepia brown colour. At this stage I removed the bag of hulls from the dye pot because the hulls can be reused and I didn’t want to contaminate the hulls with the modifier. I split the hull dye into two, half I set aside to finish later and the other half to be modified.

Add the ‘iron water’ (homemade solution of equal parts water, vinegar with some rusty nails) to the dye pot. I added 3 large nails as well. I left that gently simmering for about 90 minutes, testing colour every 15 minutes until I was happy with it.

The avocados pits initially produced a very faint colour so I left them in the pot while I added the modifier (they had done nothing so far and I really wanted to get as much colour from them as possible).

I used washing soda (sodium carbonate) to modify the pits. 1 tablespoon at first and then 1 teaspoon every 15 minutes until I’d reached the colour I was trying to achieve. Two tablespoons of washing soda in total.

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05 From dye to ink Once you’re happy with your colour, strain your liquid. I use a very fine sieve and a coffee filter. This is important if you’re using the ink in a conventional way with regular nibs as consistency is important for a good flow of ink. I don’t mind a little texture as mine is only used for mark marking.

To thicken your ink add some gum arabica, just a little at a time until you’ve reached the consistency you want for your use. Generally I use 1 tsp to 100ml.

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06 Natural colour ink In order to preserve the ink, I add a couple of cloves to my bottle of ink. You can also use thyme oil. This will help preserve the ink and stop any mould forming.

Don’t forget to label your ink, from the photograph you can see they all look very similar once bottled.

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07 Resources for brushes Virtually anything can be used to make a brush. Old sponges, recycled plastic, sea salvage and natural material, fresh or dried. Be on the lookout for broken branches or interesting foliage, often nature produces the best readymade brushes. Be adventurous with your choices, often they produce the most fascinating results.

08 Making your brushes Basically select a ‘handle’ and some materials for the ‘brush’ section and bind them together. For quick exercises I use masking tape or plumbers sealing tape

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09. (waterproof) to bind the brush. For more robust brushes I use a combination of string, strips of fabric and thin wire. Using unusual sticks or handles really help in breaking down how you would normally hold a brush and frees you up to be more experimental in your mark making. I often use dried rose stems. There’s nothing like a thorn to make you change the way you hold your brush.

by the ink. The rich sepia brown is produced with unmodified walnut hulls and the darker brown is produced by the walnut hulls modified with acid and iron (vinegar and iron water). The complete surprise was the almost oxblood red produced with avocado pits modified with sodium carbonate.

k r a m e h t e e s o Turn over t . making results..

09 & 10 Mark making with brushes Here are some example of brushes and the marks they make using the avocado pit ink.

11 & 12 Mark making results In these examples you can see the contrasting colour created 41

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Use the coupon code NSNPROMO20 for 20% OFF on any of Ross’s workshop!

Redeem your coupon code at www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/ modern-eccentrics-13430779926 This offer ends on 31 August 2018

R FIND IT ONLINE Blog: moderneccentrics.wordpress.com Instagram: @spottedhyenas & @moderneccentrics Twitter: @spottedhyenas & @moderneccentric Pinterest: @spottedhyenas Facebook: @moderneccentrics

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SUSTAINABLE FASHION

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In Conversation With Nature ..

Discovering Sustainability In Textiles With Zoe Burt Zoë plant colour swatches

Words by Kate Stuart Photography by Marienne Wie and Zoë Burt

Zoë Burt comes to her craft from a place of nature, and it is evident in everything she touches that there is a tangible conversation between her work and the natural world. “My childhood”, she tells me, “was largely spent outdoors.”

Bringing the outdoors into her practice and sharing that connection of art and nature is everything to her. Citing early inspirations from her mother, a talented machine

knitter who created fashion for family and friends, here was a relationship that helped to kindle in Zoë a lifelong passion for and connection with nature. “Holding my mum’s hand”, Zoë recalls, “and going around the garden to name the flowers and plants and recognise their beauty or fragrance was a significant moment: bay, roses, lavender – this introduction was a treat to the senses” A second but equally significant influence on Zoë’s early artistic development was her uncle, the abstract artist Theo Mendez, who taught at Camberwell College of Art and was Head of Textiles from 1976 until 1984. “I admired his natural flair for colour and form through painting and collage, his appreciation of jazz music and his fabulous light studio”, Zoë explained. These two important people clearly influence her practice still. Colour, design, botany, cloth – all come together in her creative work which has encompassed cyanotype or blueprint, sustainable fashion, natural dyes and most recently, a book in collaboration with the photographer Marianne Wie called Nature Journal, which Zoë describes as “a creative journal to connect with nature throughout the seasons. Step-bystep techniques in how to make botanical inks, natural dye recipes, lumen photography, blueprinting and other processes.”

Training in Textiles at Central St Martins, Zoë specialised

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in print, and told me she was intrigued to find the cyanotype process detailed in the book Blueprints on Fabric, by Barbara Hewitt (Interweave Press, 1995) which became her first guide to the process also known as Blueprinting or Sunprinting, that she uses in much of her practice now. In 2009, she was chosen as Artist in Residence to the Brockwell Lido in South London, where she created portraits of the swimmers using cyanotype and life-sized sheets of watercolour paper.

“A range of characters, young [and] old, of all backgrounds created a snapshot of summer as we rinsed and fixed the prints together in the outdoor showers and people watched themselves emerge – literally out of the blue. It was a great way to connect and create art together.” Zoë Burt, 2018 Indeed, creating art with others, and continuing that human connection with nature, is something that drives Zoë – her work in supporting sustainability in fashion and increasing knowledge and understanding of its importance has led her to projects like Seeds of Fashion. “Having worked for twenty years in the fashion and textile industry,” she told me, “I was curious to forge a connection between plants and fashion and help people reconnect with where their clothes come from.”

It is true that many consumers of fashion are blissfully unaware of where their clothes have been made, with what, by whom and in what conditions. Fashion Revolution, a worldwide movement that was started in 2013 by Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro as a response to the Rana Plaza textile factory collapse, has been bringing awareness to the masses, but there is still a long way to go. “I love textiles and fashion”, Zoë explained, “but am also concerned about the impact of the fashion industry on our planet. The fashion industry is the most harmful industry to the planet after oil [and] only 12% of clothes are currently recycled. These statistics came from talk by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation which aims to accelerate our transition to a circular economy… a system to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use and regenerate natural systems.”

Circular economy and the need for more natural dyeing techniques to replace the harmful chemicals used in so much of the fashion industry, were strong driving forces behind the Seeds of Fashion project. In this remarkable venture, participants grew cotton, flax and jute in a community garden at Brockwell Park as well as other sites across London, to create a garment grown from seed within an urban environment. Creating a connection for those involved, many of whom were children, with the work and energy that is required to produce clothing, the project sought to highlight the journey garments travel before they reach the point of purchase. Seeking also to create discourse on the use of chemicals in fashion, by creating this garment without harmful dying processes, the project gave space for the discussion of natural dyes and their sources. Zoë was awarded a Timberland Earthkeeper grant for her work in this urban textile fibre growing project. Working in collaboration with East London Primary Schools, London College of Fashion and Cordwainers Grow in Hackney they produced a hand knitted vest as a final piece which was exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society, Hackney Museum, Brockwell Hall and the London Permaculture Festival. The fibres were hand spun by lots of different people, and this is evident in the way the garment was knitted, with a wonderful unevenness to the yarn a testament to the many hands that contributed to its creation.

The Garden Museum among others. Zoë told me, “devising Tailor-made projects for other design-meets-horticulture venues followed naturally and has helped me push my creativity as I tune into the space and energy of a project.

Cyanotype has been an open medium to help construct projects due to its historical links with botany and the history of the female pioneer artist Anna Atkins who used the process to make exquisite artworks and scientifically accurate documents of plants.”

Zoë’s passion for nature, her commitment to increasing education around sustainable, ethical fashion, ecologically supportive dyes, her deep awareness of the connections between art and nature continue to grow, alongside her work in cyanotype because, she tells me, “I truly value art and nature and their intrinsic links, it is soulful connection for me.”

As conversations go, there can hardly be a better one than this, since, as Zoë says, “it encourages new discoveries and opens portals of appreciation, illumination, connection with others and breath-taking beauty.”

You can see more of Zoë’s work, find out more about natural dyes and join the conversation at www.zoeburt.com Twitter: @SeedsofFashion Instagram: @zoeblueprintandbotanicals Pinterest: @ZoeMillBurt

Living and working so close to The South London Botanical Institute brings Zoë continuing opportunities to help people of all ages connect creatively with nature and art, which she is passionate about, and her work here has led to the creation of other projects for Tate, The Royal Horticultural Society and 46

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Cyanotype

Cyanotype, also known as blueprinting or sunprinting, is a way of recording an image using potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate, which are light sensitive. The process was created

by John Herschel (1792 -1871) to copy his astronomy notes.

By using an object, negative or black and white drawing made on tracing paper and laying it over the top of paper or fabric that has been painted with these light sensitive chemicals, an image can be made. When the sunlight or UV light falls onto the exposed parts of the paper or cloth, a chemical reaction occurs – and once rinsed with water, the image appears, fixing the print in a beautiful cyan blue. It was once used by architects and engineers to make copies of their drawings quickly and cheaply, hence the term blueprint being used. Anna Atkins, a British botanist (1799 – 1871) used the technique for what is thought to be the first work with photographic illustrations, namely her Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843), where she displayed scientifically accurate plant specimens.

Cyanotype is now more commonly found in art practices, including those of award-winning artist Zoë Burt.

Courses

• Summer Cyanotype - planet themed - 9th – 11th July 10 – 4pm Course code: STEO51A at Morley College, Morley College, 61 Westminster Bridge Road SE1, Tel: +44 0207 450 1934 • Natural Dyeing with Kitchen Botanics Saturday 28th July Royal Horticultural Society, event code 14813 (12 places) Booking 0203 176 5830

Nature Journal, Seasonal Creative Projects

• Various short courses :Textiles for Fashion, Fashion Portfolio Preparation, Fashion Design for 16 - 18year olds at UAL Chelsea and London College of Fashion during summer 2018 www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/short-courses/teenagers/

A creative journal to connect with nature throughout the seasons. Step-by-step techniques in how to make botanical inks, natural dye recipes, lumen photography, blueprinting and other processes. Featuring space for sketches and field notes to make the journal your own. With a foreword by Michael Holland of Chelsea Physic Garden.

An ideal gift for yourself or a friend.

• Advanced Textile Workshop September 2018 VTX005A, Morley College • Seasonal Nature Dyeing and Sustainable Textiles 11TH September 2018 Course code: VTX218A Morley College • Brixton Design Trail natural dye and print workshops with CERES, September 2018

For a chance to win Natural Journal turn over to page 79!

• Art holidays in Greece www.loveyoursketchbook.com gaiaworkshops Autumn 14 - 21 October 2018-05-23 Spring 8 – 15 June 2019, e-mail: gaiaworkshops@gmail.com

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UPCYCLING HUB

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Fabric Yarn From Textile Waste Interview by NSN Team Photography by Becka Wright Becka is a talented creative person with lots of plans for Renee & Burt, a creative enterprise that started as a personal experiment and developed organically from there. Becka loves the textures that result from crocheting strips of unwanted fabrics, she became so passionate about fabric yarns that she made them her personal business. Now she is planning a great initiative, Trade Your Textile Waste scheme, which aims to get fabric waste back into circulation. She’s also working to source fabrics responsibly from abroad and runs a blog where she gives practical advice to reduce textile waste.

Hi Becka, thanks so much for allowing us to get an insight into your work. How would you like to introduce yourself?

job as a creative manager.

Hi I am Becka, a crochet designer and textile waste yarn creator and the face behind Renee & Burt. I am 27 years old and based in Suffolk, UK. I love nature and animals and walking barefoot in the grass and sand. I have always loved creating things and was always found drawing and painting when I was younger. I consider myself quite an introvert and uncool individual. I love crocheting (of course), upcycling clothing, yoga, and visiting farmers markets and handmade and vintage fairs.

I learnt to crochet after university. I have always had a love for yarn and turned to knitting while in university but I always found it difficult and was constantly dropping and adding stitches by accident. I decided to learn to crochet when I really wanted to make myself a granny square blanket. After I had mastered the granny square I absolutely loved it, I found the process much quicker and the process just clicked. I instantly started trying to make my own patterns.

What’s your professional background?

You mention on your website that you had an ‘unhealthy obsession with fabric’ and one day you just had the idea of cutting fabric into strips. Can you tell us a bit more about how the idea of using fabric strips as yarn for your projects developed from there?

What do you like about crochet? Where did you learn?

I studied Illustration at the University of Hertfordshire, after University I got a job as a Book Designer for children’s books. My next career move was a designer for a children’s craft company where I designed craft kits for the likes of Tescos, Sainsbury’s and Wilko. I have always had a passion for crafts, in particular crochet, and the dream to own my own business so it was a natural progression to then start my own business, I now share my time getting Renee & Burt going, along with my part time 48

I have always loved texture and wanted to find a way to incorporate into my crochet work. I had a stash of preowned fabric that I never knew what to do with it and one night I decided I wanted to create a rug for our bedroom but I wanted to capture texture and pattern in it. And one

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of the pieces of fabric was the perfect colour and pattern and I just cut it up into strips and started crocheting with it. I loved the look the fabric yarn created and the obsession grew from there. I started experimenting with different textures and seeing how they all mixed together. I am working on a selection of patterns that help teach people how they can incorporate fabric yarn into their work.

Which types of fabrics do you prefer using in your work?

When creating my yarns I use a wide range of fabrics from cottons and jerseys to chiffon and lace. I love experimenting with lots of different fabrics and seeing what textures I can create in my work. They all add something different in their own way, I love seeing how they work with wool and other types of fabric. I really don’t have a favourite as different types work better for different pieces.

You mentioned also that you want to help the environment through your creations, when did you first realise there was a connection between your craft and the environment? How did you first make this connection?

I have always been conscious about the environment; it goes back as far as when I was at High School. For my A levels I collected litter from the beach and created an installation with it, I separated the different rubbish into colours so it looked like a beautiful rainbow rather than a pile of litter.

You say that all your fabric yarns come from 100% textile waste? Where and how do you source this ‘waste’ from?

I originally started creating my yarns from old clothing I no longer worn, however I felt that I was not really helping the environment as I was using items that could still be used for the purpose they were created for. I started to research into textile waste and discovered there was tonnes of factory waste that was just being discarded. I have since built a very good relationship with a fabric manufacturer who sells me all of their scraps and remnants.

Tell us something about your Trade Your Textile Waste scheme. How does it work?

The Trade Your Textile Waste scheme at the moment is just an idea that I am trialling to see how it goes. I want to try and get textile waste in circulation somehow. Just because someone else sees something as rubbish another person sees it as treasure. It’s a working process at the moment so watch this space.

Any new projects in the pipeline that you’d like our readers to know about?

Renee & Burt have a lot in the pipeline. I am currently in the process of outsourcing the creation of fabric yarns overseas to a group of talented artisans. I want to make sure that my yarns are not only environmentally friendly but the people who are creating them are also earning a living wage. I am working on a set of modern crochet patterns to show people how they can incorporate fabric yarns into their projects. I am also hoping to set up a kickstarter campaign to raise enough funds to be able to exhibit at a Trade Show next year. And lastly, me and another designer, Tatty Moo, have recently started a blog about textile waste, sharing DIY tutorials and tips on how to reduce your own textile waste, you can check it out at www.whatawastecollective.co.uk

Enjoy 20% OFF

www.reneeandburt.co.uk NSM20 valid until 31st July 2018 49

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

Fabric Yarn Purse Tutorial by Becka Wright Here’s is a yarn tutorial that to make a fabric purse that Becka has kindly made for No Serial Number Magazine. If you try this project, share a picture on our social media pages (tag us, tweet us, share a post on our page walls or even send us an email and we’ll re-post it for you), we are excited to see what you made!

Tools 8mm crochet hook Fabric yarn in mixed colours (I used up all my odd ends in this tutorial) or you could use super chunky weight yarn Wool Needle Gold Thread A Button

Abbreviations SLST – Slip Stitch ST - Stitch CH – Chain HTR – Half Treble Crochet

1. SLST onto the hook and chain 20.

2. HTR into the second ST from hook, HTR into each stitch (after each row you need to turn your work). Fasten off and change colour yarn.

3. CH2, HTR into each ST. Repeat this for one more row. Fasten off and change colour yarn.

4. CH2, HTR into each ST. Fasten off and change colour yarn.

5. CH2, HTR into each ST. Repeat this for one more row. Fasten off and change colour yarn.

6. CH2, HTR into each ST. Fasten off and change colour yarn.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6, five more times. Fasten off and change colour yarn.

8. CH2, HTR into 8 ST’s, CH1 and miss the next ST, HTR into the remaining ST’s, you should have created a little hole in the middle of this row, this is your button hole. Fasten off.

9. With your wool needle weave in all the loose ends.

10. Fold your work into the shape of an envelope and lining up the button hole with the front side of the purse place the button there and sew into place. Make sure you only sew the button onto one of the sides of the purse.

11. Keep the purse folded like an envelope. Thread your gold thread in your needle and along one side of the purse weave in and out of each stitch sewing up one side of the purse.

Fasten off and trim any loose ends.

12. Repeat step 11 along the other side of your purse.

You have now completed your very own fabric yarn purse!

R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.reneeandburt.co.uk Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest: @reneeandburt Twitter: @reneeandburtco

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51

INNOVATIVE MATERIALS

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

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Ecovative: Pioneering Fungal Biomaterial Words by Paige Perillat-Piratoine Photography by Ecovative To our knowledge, fungi have been around on our planet for approximately 1.3 billion years. It is even widely theorized that fungi helped break down the bare rock on earth, creating liveable soil for plants to grow on. And it is only 600 million years after fungi that land plants evolved and populated earth. Yet we know much more about plants than we do about fungi. It is estimated there are approximately 5.1 million species of fungi on earth, with the vast majority of them still undiscovered.

Today this gap is slowly being closed. Mycology, a relatively young science, is gaining traction and being explored much more. This is because we are discovering the breath of applications fungi can offer. They are plentiful and they are radical.

One of them is in the world of biomaterials.

Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungi: an underground network of very thin threads that form a structure very much resembling the internet, or our own neural pathways. Depending on the variety of fungi, mycelium can grow into and throughout different materials such as soil, compost and wood.

As the mycelium grows through a material, it binds the individual particles together into one solid object.

Eben Bayer, the founder of Ecovative originally noticed this as a child working on his family’s farm.

Ecovative is now a pioneering biomaterial company.

The process starts with an agricultural waste product.

Corn stalks, for example, which they purchase from regional farmers, are mixed with mycelium and are then poured in custom-shaped molds. A few days or weeks later, the mycelium has grown onto the corn husks, binding the pieces together and creating a cohesive shape. It is then dried out, which deactivates the mycelium, making the product ready for use. The resulting biomaterial may have many very interesting qualities, from fire resistance to insulation and shock absorption — some of which perform far beyond current hi-tech solutions. Even more interesting is the fact that when the mycelium product has reached its end of life it can be broken down into small pieces and composted. It will then disappear within a few months, returning nutrients back to the earth instead of breaking the nutrient cycle.

The first application Ecovative tested on a commercial scale was packaging and insulation. A product called « Mycofoam » was developed, which has very similar properties to polystyrene. What this means is huge.

There is currently a solution that exists, relatively low-cost as well as zero-waste, which can displace

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petroleum-based foams and urea-formaldehyde resins that are harmful to users and to the planet. And everyday, companies like Orbella Moss and Keap ship their products using Ecovative’s «Mycofoam». At a much wider scale, the use of this product could drastically reduce plastic use, and save later generations from drowning in toxic landfills.

The company is now partnering with Bolt Threads and working on developing an alternative to leather called Mylo. This direction of research may eventually have massive repercussions on industrial farming and animal welfare. Of course, we are at the very beginning of industrial biomaterial development and many other avenues will be explored. What is thrilling here is that research is focused on finding alternatives to the now harmful solutions of the past. Ecovative’s products are also being developed with consideration for the sourcing and end-of life of the technology, inscribing itself into the future of business as usual: the circular economy.

While at first Ecovative used a naturally existent mycelium strain, they are now working with genetically reprogramming the mycelium as part of their DARPA contract. The goal of the project is to create a new class of materials that combines the structural properties of traditional building materials with attributes of living systems. This research could help the process be even more cost effective, and irrevocably displace the need for plastic and many other types of harmful materials for example. Perhaps new discoveries can be made by engineering mycelium, which will advance science and society greatly. There are even fungi which have been known to degrade plastic. Engineering mycelium could provide a solution which dissolves the mountains of petroleum-based waste that accumulate on our lands and seas. Ecovative is at the forefront of companies working with mycelium proposing widely usable and economically viable solutions, and it is tremendously exciting to imagine what they might revolution next. Yet there is a need to advance with caution here. Mycelium is a powerful organism, capable of great resilience. Reprogramming organisms to suit our needs is a predictable course of action. One which has helped us feed the planet and grow food everywhere. And whether we want

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it or not, the mycological revolution is in full bloom, designing ingenious solutions. Still many artists have imagined futuristic scenarios which highlight the risks of biotechnologies and nudged researchers to thread carefully in scientific advancement.

Either way, and thankfully, research is advancing. Mycelium is not the only organism being used to explore biomaterials.

Companies are looking into algae, yeasts and bacteria to reimagine textiles, architecture, and all that we know.

Each organism has specific particularities which combined with others creates an infinity of possibilities. Ecovative is encouraging this at the citizen-science level through a side project called Grow-Bio. They sell grow kits for customers to experiment with. The grow kits are easy to use and help individuals learn and develop their skills through well explained infographs and an active online forum. One project for example looked at combining bacteria and mycelium to create a stronger biosheet than bacteria alone can usually create. The individual was able to post about the project on the forum, interact with people who might have had a similar idea and basically co-develop an experiment which was largely open-sourced on the project discussion page.

Individuals on the forum are also growing their own chairs and tables for their homes. In essence, Ecovative is enabling us to develop a much more organic reality.

R

Want to use mycelium materials to grow things at home? Check out Grow-It-Yourself material.

Use discount code NOSERIAL to get 50% OFF your first bag!

FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.ecovativedesign.com Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: @ecovative YouTube: www.youtube.com/ecovative

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Pure Waste: Upcycling Leftovers From the Cotton Industry Interview by NSN Team Photography by Pure Waste Textiles In our search for textile innovators, we came across Pure Waste, a brand that creates 100% recycled textiles through upcycling pre-consumer textile waste. This is the waste that manufacturers produce at different stages of the production process, which in some cases is down-cycled or often just sent to landfills or incinerated. Essentially, Pure Waste upcycles textile waste into premium quality textiles, therefore reducing the amount of new cotton required (and the water that’s needed to produce it too). Pure Waste’s big vision is to encourage the industry to produce by recycling instead of using new resources.

How was the company born, who originally developed the concept? What is the professional background of the founders?

and Hannes Bengs, Lauri Köngäs-Eskandari and Jukka Pesola. When they couldn’t find a fabric that was 100% ecological, they decided to do it by themselves. Pure Waste Textiles was founded by the four Costo members and fifth partner Maela Mandelli. Quite soon Raj Agrawal joined the team as the sixth partner.

The founders have a professional background in design, textile and clothing production and manufacturing and commercial education.

Pure Waste begun by first experimenting with industrial leftover materials with first-born Costo – a company that specialises in sustainable accessories founded by Anders

What’s innovative about the production process that Pure Waste has developed compared to other textile recycling processes?

This far Pure Waste seems to be the only company that commercialised 100% recycled textiles made of industrial leftovers into new textiles and products. The secret is in the fibre strength. The fibres have to be long and strong enough to fulfill the quality standards.

I see on your website that the first steps of the production process are to collect and sort the fabric waste and then mechanically open it back into fibres.

I was wondering, as your aim is to reduce water 56

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consumption, whether you wash the resulting fibres at all during this process or is that not necessary? If so, then why not?

We do wash the ready textiles, to be sure it’s clean and to stabilise it so that it won’t shrink when it’s washed the first time, for example, as a ready-made garment.

How do you sort the textile waste, is this done by hand?

We use pre-consumer waste, which means that the waste is offcuts collected from clothing and textile factories. It is easy therefore to sort the waste by colour and quality during the manufacturing. So, yes the textile waste is sorted or collected by hand.

Where are the factories and mills where you source your textile waste based?

In south India located in the same area as our CMT (Cut Make and Trim) factory.

Is your Pure Waste production factory - from making the recycled fabric to making your clothing line – based entirely in India? Can you tell us more about why you chose to produce in this country?

The whole production is based entirely in India apart from designing which we do in our office in Helsinki, Finland. We have chosen India as our production country because our raw material – the textile waste – is located there where the textile industry is blooming.

Why do you mix recycled cotton with ‘chemically recycled polyester and viscose fibres’?

The length of cotton fibre shortens when we recycle it, therefore we need to mix it with recycled polyester and viscose in order to make the quality of fabrics better.

Chemical recycling is a method used for pre-consumer waste, as used rags and clothes. With this method the waste is dissolved so that the natural fibres turn into viscose, which then can be made back into usable raw material.

Can the end product (Pure Waste fabrics) be in turn recycled when it is no longer needed? Being of mixed materials, does it make the fabric challenging to recycle?

At the moment we are unable to recycle our products into new ones (clothes) once they are worn out, because of mixed materials and the shortening fibre length when reusing the same fabrics many times. It is possible to recycle them into some other things such as pillow and blanket shoddy, car insulation etc.

We are constantly working on recycling the post-consumer waste as well and have made some successful projects on the topic. We are also working on the mixed fabrics to get them 100% organic.

We heard much about microplastics contaminating water on the news lately, is using polyester adding to this problem?

We use polyester recycled from PET bottles in our products to make the quality better, even though we are aware of the microplastics problem. As I mentioned earlier, the length of cotton fibre is not always long enough, that’s why we have to add recycled polyester in order to make the quality of the products better. We believe that the product, which lasts a long time, is the most ecological possible. We are looking into ways to recycle polyester out of recycled textiles or replace it with some other recycled textile fibres. We wish that in future the cotton farmed will be better quality with a long fibre length, so that we won’t even need to mix fibres in the first place. That would also make textile recycling a lot easier.

R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.purewaste.org Facebook: @purewastetextiles Instagram: @purewaste YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/purewastetextiles 57

E-WASTE

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Weaving Cassette Tapes: Sentimental Waste, Cloth and Craftivism Interview by NSN Team Photography by rehyphen® JJ Chuan, the creator of Rehyphen® and MusicCloth®, here tells us about how she developed a new type of cloth, which she turns into a variety of objects as well as exhibition pieces, out of old tapes from the much loved cassette. Cassette tapes came first to market in the 60s, but experienced a peak in popularity in the 80s and 90s before being replaced first by the compact disc and then by digital music. JJ Chuan uses a traditional weaving technique to make use of this ‘waste’. Weaving these tiny, often fragile, tapes together is definitely not a small effort, and JJ Chuan in this interview talks also about the significance of reusing this material.

Hi JJ Chuan, I am intrigued by your innovative upcycling business. Can you first tell me a little bit about you, where do you currently live and what’s your professional or educational background?

I am a Parsons School of Design alumna from New York. I call myself a globalist, a change maker and a memory keeper. I was originally born in Malaysia and educated in Singapore and New York. I am currently based in Singapore and founded Rehyphen® studio with the mission to lead and inspire a sustainable way to be fashionable.

What do you make with the cloth you use?

We started our first product in Kickstarter to launch our MusicCloth® tote bag and slowly developed into different objects: MusicCloth® city map poster, MusicCloth® world map poster, MusicCloth® coaster, MusicCloth® notebook, MusicCloth® metro card stickers, MusicCloth® silhouette portrait. We also do exhibition pieces like MusicCloth® dresses and scarves.

This year we also launched a series of new collection which came from the leftover hardware and empty cassette tapes that we had already finished emptying.

Tweet Tape is an unique postcard. We started collecting discarded cassette tapes and video tapes in late 2016. In 2017, we used those donated tapes to weave into endless

Tell us a little bit about e-waste. How big is the problem?

Are there any specific problems related to disposing of e-waste? If yes, what are they?

More than 41.8 million tones of e-waste ended up in landfills in 2014 and only 6.5 million tonnes were brought in for recycling according to United Nations University. Toxic chemicals in electronic products can lead into the land over time or are released into the atmosphere. Today, we are fast evolving into a culture that primarily downloads and consumes entertainment digitally. Analogue items such as cassette tapes are slowly being phased out.

How did you get into upcycling cassettes and how did you get the idea of using cassette tapes to make cloth?

Sentimentality was another reason for the creation of MusicCloth®, cassette tapes were part of the medium of communication with my best friends (who live in Australia) when I was in high school, and smartphones and social media had not been invented yet. When I found those cassettes again during a major clean up of my room when I was back from New York, I came up with this idea to use a traditional weaving technique to weave them into a piece of cloth, in addition to making waste and memories beautiful.

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repetition, or with the meaning going “backwards”.

“Hyphen” is a sign ( - ) used to join words to indicate that they have a combined meaning or that they are linked. I want to sell the world “a better world”. Rehyphen® is created with the aim of solving real-life problems.

On your website, you call yourself a ‘craftivist’, can you tell me a bit more about your connection as an artisan to the environment... what can crafts do for the environment?

Craftivist is a combination of the words crafter and activist.

We send gentle, creative messages, hoping to trigger conversations about social change. We explore the power of being meaningful with our head and hands. Making our MusicCloth® no matter how big or how small. We make with meaning, and most importantly, share ideas and make a difference. It is a form of education to pursue this peaceful mode of action with pride for the next industrial revolution.

STEP BY STEP MusicCloth®. This year, we decided to use those empty tapes. Each empty tape comes with short and meaningful quotes that are typed at the end of the tapes and then rolled back into the cassette. We hope that people will use this special “postcard” to write down a special message and give it to a loved one.

Step 1 Pick a song

From these cassettes we also created gear accessories. We developed a series of accessories by using leftover hardware from mini DV tapes and applied SWAROVSKI crystals to upcycle the design. It is not only an environmental movement but a genre in its own right. It is a reminder to observe the other side of existence, the essence of art.

Step 5 You made it! A piece of MusicCloth®

Step 2 Play your music with our old school #Walkman provided Step 3 Pull out your tapes!

Step 4 Weave your MusicCloth® . Ready, Cassette, Go! Step 6 Final touch: Track your MusicCloth® Write down the name of the original cassette album you used.

Follow this instructions by viewing the steps on Instagram @re_hyphen

The idea of MusicCloth® is to combine innovative products, services and experiences. It is also an innovative system that wants to embrace change. We adopt a “story-doing” approach that allows local communities to ideate, direct and participate in full effect in this social practice. We take the idea of participant- generated content to the next level, fully immersing local communities into every integral part of our MusicCloth®. We want people to be encouraged to see waste with a fresh perspective and get curious about how things are made.

What are your most popular products?

MusicCloth® city map and world map.

Are you thinking of using other e-waste materials in the future? Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?

Our upcoming project is to use Michael Jackson’s limited edition cassette tapes and weave them into Michael Jackson’s three significant poses.

I am curious about the name of your business, ‘rehyphen’, why did you choose it? What does it mean?

Rehyphen®: “re” stands for resources, reveal, rethink. A prefix, used with the meaning again and again to indicate

R FIND IT ONLINE Website: www.rehyphen.org Facebook @rehyphen Instagram : @re_hyphen

Check page 65 to see rehyphen®’S events 59

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

E-WASTE on etsy No Serial Number Magazine selected her favourite e-waste makes from the world of Etsy. Have you ever incorporated e-waste in your work, would you consider adding some electrical conduits in your next project or have you ever bought a craft product made from upcycled e-waste?

Email us your ideas and we might select them for our next e-waste feature!

UNBROKEN THINGS

by Fernando Pinzon My craft diaries are my way to create environmental awareness and inspire people through recycling to write in the traditional way rather than the electronic way. The magic of the transformation of the waste to the final product is my passion. I would like to think that I am contributing my bit to the arduous task of maintaining a green planet. I belong to many ecological movements and they have helped me to maintain the hope that living in a better world is possible, although unfortunately part of humanity is insanely blinded by the greed of natural resources.

Products: Handmade Journals with wooden covers and banana leaf paper, bound in coffee sacks, upcycled leather, Bicycle inner tubes, and gorgeously adorned with countless upcycled ingredients from car and bicycle parts to old clothing accessories to E-waste and wild harvested flora.

Get in touch with Fernando: Etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/unbrokenthings Facebook: @DiariosArtesanales and @Unbroken Things

Lee Bots by Nancy Solbrig Lee Bots, is my love child I started four years ago. These robot sculptures are handcrafted by me out of discarded electronics. Once on their way to the trash these computers, printers, electrical conduit, etc get torn apart by me and reassembled with new life as robots. The robots are assembled together using a variety of different wire, including networking wire and power cord wire. The robots are put to gather with a variety of new and old parts. Like computer parts that are only a few years old can be put together with a vacuum tube from the 50s.

Get in touch with Nancy: Website: www.leebots.com Instagram: @leebots Etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/leebots Redbubble: www.redbubble.com/people/lee-bots Facebook: @LeeBotss/

Do you want your E-Waste craft to appear in the magazine?

Write to us info@noserialnumber.org

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Interview by NSN Team Photography by Arne Jenard, Luca Piras and Ulrika Nihlen Stylist Clara Dayet ecoBirdy is an inspiring business that has managed successfully to combine eco friendly design and education. Vanessa and Joris, the founders of ecoBirdy, have a unique approach to their product design. They use a technology that allows them make fully recyclable objects for the house using recycled plastic toys… but their work does not end here, they have created a children’s book and devised school programmes that allow them to engage with the very important owners of the toys that ecoBirdy recycles. Getting children on board by making them emotionally attached to safeguarding the environment and recycling is not an easy task, but it seems Vanessa and Joris have found a really balanced recipe for success.

Hi Vanessa and Joris, thank you for taking the time to talk to us about ecoBirdy. First of all tell us about ecoBirdy, who are the people behind this project and what’s their professional background?

Vanessa: Behind ecoBirdy it is me Vanessa and my partner Joris. We both worked in the design and fashion industry in the past. When it came to creating our own brand we were questioning ourselves what to create and especially why creating something new if so many beautiful designs already exist from the past. We take very seriously social and environmental responsibility, personally and professionally speaking. So we thought about creating something by making the most of the precious resources our beautiful earth has to offer. This is where we started to research on sustainable materials for our designs.

of kids furniture and home accessories was January 2018 in Paris at Maison & Objet fair. We were so excited to see the reaction of the public to ecoBirdy and were beyond glad it was so positive! In April we also attended Milan Design Week to present our collection with a special installation called “Sea of Plastic”; it showed a surface full of plastic waste reflected by a mirror in the air - a reality for which we are all responsible!

When was ecoBirdy founded? How did the idea for ecoBirdy first come from? When did you first think toys could be recycled to make items for home decor?

Joris: Yes, it was really amazing to finally present what we have worked on for such a long time. There was so much work and effort we had put into ecoBirdy, and we still continue doing so much research, engineering and testing… How did the idea for ecoBirdy come? When we were researching on sustainable materials and came to study about plastic we found out that plastic toys are among the most intensive users of plastic of all consumer goods and most of them are abandoned after a short time of usage. We liked the idea of bringing these shortly used plastic toys back to their children in furniture pieces.

Vanessa: We have been working on ecoBirdy for more than two years but the official launch of our first collection

Tell us a little about ecothylene™ the innovative material

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HOME CHRONICLES

“I am a recycler, oh yeah baby”: Teaching Children About Circular Economy Through Design

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

CHARLIE, THE CHAIR

Friendly, soft forms and rounded edges are complemented by a large seating surface. This makes Charlie not only comfortable for kids but also offers other advantages. Thanks to these shapes, Charlie is both light and stable, a combination that makes it simple for kids to move and yet not easy to tip over. Suitable for private as well as public spaces, Charlie is supplied with an invisible floor anchoring device. Charlie comes in five colours and can be used both indoors and outdoors.

LUISA, THE TABLE

Part of a set with Charlie, Luisa is a table featuring soft shapes and rounded edges. Thanks to a smooth transition from the table top to the legs, Luisa is comfortable as well as safe for kids’ use. Suitable for private as well as public spaces, Luisa is supplied with an invisible floor anchoring device.

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that ecoBirdy developed, what’s innovative about it? How, if at all, it changes the way plastic is recycled?

selection of our story’s characters is based on a survey we did previously to choose the most common toys. Usually kids do not ask a lot of questions, but the moment they see the scene of Boaty, one of the characters who ends up in the belly of a whale and Miss Kitchen, another character that is about to get incinerated, they become really shocked. Some of them have almost tears in their eyes. In the end they are clearly relieved and happy that there is a solution with ecoBirdy’s recycling programme…

One thing that really impressed me was when they see our furniture pieces, their first reaction is pointing the little colourful flakes inside saying “this is my toy”. Therefore we know that we have chosen the right approach to teach them what circular economy means and why it is so important to recycle and make the most of our earth’s precious resources.

Vanessa: ecothylene™ is a material we have developed and studied very intensively. Thanks to an accurate sorting during the recycling process, ecothylene™makes it possible to create colourful pieces without adding any resin. It is completely free from any harmful substances and 100% safe for the use of children and of course adults too.

How do you source used toys?

Joris: At the moment we have our school programme running in Belgium where old plastic toys are collected. We would love to work with partners in the future to expand it also to other countries and amplify our collection system. We are working on that but always searching for a solution where no extra shipping or use of packaging materials is necessary to not create unnecessary waste.

How could our readers raise awareness about the recycling of plastic toys in their local schools? Do you have any advice?

You mention on your website that the process of making 100% recycled products is not so straight-forward, as you need to make sure the products are safe, can you tell us a little bit about the process involved?

Joris: We always bring our own book “Journey to a new life” during our school visits to introduce the children to the problematic and to explain why we are doing what we are doing. “Journey to a new life” tells the story of Scooter, a plastic push-bike that after being abandoned by his toddler friend goes on a journey to find out how harmful plastic waste can be to our earth and how ecoBirdy does offer the possibility for new life as beautiful design furniture. It is a storybook with short texts and big images illustrating Scooter’s journey. Our book can be ordered on our webpage, at the moment we have a Dutch and an English version of it, we are planning to publish it in other languages too in the future. This book will help tell children about plastic waste and its impact in an appropriate way, in schools or at home.

Vanessa: Recycling plastic toys is not easy because a lot of toys are made of many different plastic types and contain also other materials. This is why very accurate sorting, cleaning and grinding is so important during the recycling process. Our furniture is not only 100% made of recycled plastic but it was also very important to us to also create pieces that could be easily recycled in their entirety. This means that the plastic in our products is pure and there are no other materials inside.

Which other steps in the production process do you put in place to ensure social and environmental sustainability?

Joris: We involve a sheltered workshop in Antwerp. The collected plastic toys are unpacked and sorted there in a first step to remove batteries or other unwanted materials such as textiles. We pack all our furniture in sustainable packaging and use as few as possible packaging materials inside the boxes. Our storybook is printed in Belgium, with recycled paper and packed in compactable plastic. All promotional materials we use are printed on recycled paper too.

We love the fact that you also created a storybook and a school programme to educate children about plastic waste, what has the impact so far? Have you seen any changes since you started?

Vanessa: Kids love the story and are passionate about helping and getting involved, bringing their toys from home knowing they contribute to keep our earth cleaner and make the most of its resources. From the feedback we are getting from parents and teachers, by talking about our environment and the recycling of waste, we also encourage team play as well as self-directed playing. Parents told us that their kids started to collect trash when they are outside trying to recycle it. Others started telling their friends to not throw away trash but think about how they could still use it or what they could make out of it. Some also told their parents to recycle more. Teachers told us that their pupils were crazy about the sentence “I am a recycler, oh yeah baby” (this is what we taught them during our school visits when they threw their old plastic toys into our collection container) and continued saying it to each other all the time. It makes us happy to get this positive feedback, we know our decision of starting with the little ones to make a big impact is the right one.

R FIND IT ONLINE

What are the most interesting questions that children have asked during your school visits? Can you give us some examples?

Website: www.ecobirdy.com Facebook: @ecoBirdy Instagram: @ecobirdy Pinterest: @ecobirdydesign

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ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

‘Hurrah for Colour!’ Vegetarian Segment Quiche Cake Party is the alter ego of Freelance Cook and Pastry Chef Nausicaa Frusi, who is based in the Milan area. Intrigued by Nausicaa’s mastery and her passion for organic produce and recipes suitable for a vegetarian diet, we asked her to share some tasty seasonal recipes. She has now become a valued magazine collaborator.

This recipe was created by Nausicaa as she spent a period of time lending her services to No Serial Number Magazine, at our Italian native home in Navelli (Abruzzo, Italy).

Nausicaa’s variation is an ode to summer - she chose seasonal vegetables to decorate the quiche.

If you grow your own vegetables, then this is the perfect summer recipe. If not, then we recommend using local produce from farmers’ markets, where you can buy directly

Ingredients for the shortcrust pastry:e 250g wholemeal flour 100g butter 60g pecorino

40g parmesan 1 egg a pinch of salt a pinch of pepper

Method for the pastry: Place the flour in a bowl, then add the butter and salt.

Knead with your fingertips until it reaches a breadcrumb consistency. Add the cheese and mix quickly. At this point make a well in the centre of the dough and add the egg.

Mix together quickly. Form into a ball and leave to rest in the fridge for 24 hours.

To prepare the quiche, roll the dough into the shape of your chosen tin. Don’t forget the sides. Now begin to form the segments with the vegetables you prepared earlier.

Bake for 25-30 minutes at 180°C. Check after 20-25 minutes to make sure the vegetables haven’t dried out too much.

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from small producers.

It is perfect served on its own with a green salad, but also makes an ideal centrepiece for a summer picnic.

If you wish to serve it at a picnic then you could make more than one, depending on the number of picnickers.

Your guests will be just as impressed by the sight of the colourful segments exploding against the feast table as they will by its delicious flavour (or flavours!).

Do try the seasonal varieties that I recommend.

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WORKSHOPs, EVENTS, EXHIBITIONS station

Ingredients for decorating the quiche: (spring version) artichokes asparagus spinach

(autumn version) mushrooms onions broccoli potatoes

(summer version) aubergine large red onion yellow pepper courgettes red tomatoes

(winter version) red cabbage white cabbage onions potatoes

FERAL METAL UPCYCLED FLOWER MAKING WORKSHOP - UK I will be running an upcycled flower making workshop as part of the Festival of a Thrift 2018 in Redcar 22nd & 23rd September.

Method for the vegetables: Wash and chop the vegetables.

Heat oil in a frying pan and sauté each vegetable separately for a few minutes while adding salt.

They should be soft but not fall apart.

JOUMANA MADLEJ AKA MAJNOUNA - UK July 14: View Tube Local Creative Market (10:00-17:00, The View Tube, the Greenway, Marshgate Lane London, E15 2PJ

BOTANICAL INKS - UK July 4th - Bundle Dyeing With Flowers And Plant Materials, Ibiza Spain.

July 5th - Natural Ink making using local plants and minerals, Ibiza Spain.

July 13th - ​Bundle Dyeing With Local Plants, Flowers and Food Waste at Potager, Cornwall, UK. August 15th - Upcycling with indigo + bundle dye at Bristol Textile Quarter (details tbc), UK. August 18th - ​Bundle-Dyeing With Mayfield Flowers, Scotland.

ROPEWORKS - UK Craft Central market at the Forge, London UK 30th June – 1st July www.craftcentral.org.uk/

MUSIC CLOTH - SINGAPORE Ready, Cassette, Go! Arts experience Pick a cassette tapes / video tapes and let’s weave them into a piece of MusicCloth® www.airbnb.co.uk/experiences/60719

R FIND IT ONLINE

ecoBirdy - BELGIUM

Website: www.cakeparty.it Facebook: @cakepartyitalia Instagram: @cake.party.mi

London Design Fair, September 20-23, 2018, London UK

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ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

Democratising Plastic Recycling “Why shouldn’t there be a plastics workshop, similar to a ceramic or wood workshop?”

PRECIOUS PLASTIC - Mixed Needs Plastics

Mixed Needs Plastics Team Michael Bunsen Eric Cheong Midori Hirose Gabi Villasenor Website: www.mixedneedsplastics.com Instagram: @mixedneedsplastics

Words and photography by Gabi Villasenor

No Serial Number Magazine continues their exploration of Precious Plastic projects around the world. We ask leaders of local initiatives to give us a glimpse into the workings of Plastic Precious machines, why did they decide to build a machine and what are they going to do with it? From awareness raising to artistic projects, from an effort at waste minimisation to product design, we want to hear how this project is empowering people to take plastic recycling into their own hands. In this issue we talk to Michael Bunse, co-founder of the Mixed Needs Plastics Collective, based in Oregon, USA.

Late 2017, Michael Bunsen, now a co-founding member of the Mixed Needs Plastics Collective, introduced two colleagues and myself to Precious Plastics.

Michael and I have a background in the arts, albeit from different areas. Michael is an artist, technologist, programmer and environmental advocate who works with artists, businesses and design firms. I have a background in fine arts and run a small ceramic studio from our home.

My interest is in materials and experimentation on a very visceral level, as is most of the team.

While Precious Plastics blossomed throughout the EU and other countries, it was relatively unknown in the US and specifically in the Pacific Northwest, where we’re located.

In short, Precious Plastics was designed by Dave Hakkens, 2013 in the Netherlands. Hakkens built and developed open-source machines to help reform post-consumer plastic waste in a variety of ways. Machine blueprints are posted free online, creating a global community that’s curbing local plastic waste by reshaping used plastics into new, useful products. The process starts with a shredder which granulates the plastic into sizeable bits that can be extruded, injected or reformed with a compression machine. Precious Plastics launched an interactive map on their site where you can see a workshop space or interested recycler in every part of the globe. Our initial thought to this was, YES, why shouldn’t there be a plastics workshop, similar to a ceramic or wood workshop?

Our partners in this project have rounded out the team in a myriad of ways.

Midori Hirose is a fine artist, art educator and curator. Her work centres around community exchanges and education which create spaces for dialogue, interaction and people driven projects. Eric Cheong is an accomplished architect with a focus on hospitality projects and strong sense of place making as a general practice in projects. He often deals with opportunistic urban conditions and loves to rethink what placemaking can mean.

When we started investigating the landscape of recycling, we found rather disheartening information. Less than 10% of our plastic gets recycled, while the rest is put into a landfill or burned at another countries’ expense.

Since forming our collective, we’ve started asking a lot questions. What would happen if we didn’t use plastic as a disposable material? What if it could be coveted and valued in a new way? What if the problem doesn’t lie in technological challenges of recycling and the solution to this problem is to change our perceived value of an item?

How can we as artists help shift the perspective to how

As a group of artists, designers and experimenters, we knew this material had massive potential, thus began our research. News broke in January 2018 that China no longer would take US recycling. It felt serendipitous and all the more relevant to create a project based around plastic waste as a considered material. In February 2018, we started Mixed Needs Plastics with founding members, Midori Hirose and Eric Cheong.

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Injection machine parts - painted sun yellow

Melted PLA plastic experiement

Michael Bunsen holding up the components of our injection machine

Melted plastic experiments

Tools and gear

PLA plastic waste stream given from Proto Pasta

we see plastic in our everyday lives? And how can we create meaningful objects or tools that aren’t thrown back into the current waste stream? These have become the backbone questions of our mission.

We’ve built our first injection mold machine prototype based on Precious Plastic blueprints. With the help of fellow collaborator, Shawn Creeden, we were able to weld the machine this past weekend. We’ve also paired with local 3D filament manufacturer, Proto-Pasta. Their small team of engineers created innovative technology to industrially extrude PLA filament. We began taking some of their scrap plastic into our workshop, making this our first official waste stream in the project.

To continue building the shredder machine, our next big step is to raise funds. The shredder requires a sophisticated process of machining and welding. As soon as we develop this equipment, we will take our machines on the road to to communities and will reshape waste material onsite into new, useful objects. We’re excited about sparking waste material conversations and thoughts on changing one’s own taboos and perceptions about plastic.

With this, we say, stay curious and diligent. We only have one Earth.

Until our next update —

Gabi Villasenor

Shredded plastic in MNP studio

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ZERO WASTE STORIES BEHIND EVERYDAY OBJECTS

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

Setting Up a Zero Waste Shop Words by Kate Stuart Photography by Charlotte’s Cupboard, Sasha McKinlay and Bridget Batchelor Photography

“Away”. A mythical place where we send the stuff we no longer want. Broken stuff and old, worn out stuff. But often bags of packaging, out of date food we bought too much of and items we can’t find a non-plastic alternative for.

It sometimes feels like an impossible task to get the planet to a place where we are not fuelling the ongoing environmental catastrophe, but the Zero Waste Movement is gaining space, bringing positive change in its wake.

Across the world there are shops popping up where you can buy groceries, toiletries, household goods and more, package and plastic free, in quantities you need and that are affordable, not just the standard sizes that contribute further to our waste problem.

I’m passionate about reducing waste and hope to open a zero-waste shop in my hometown of Newcastle, so I decided to chat with some inspiring entrepreneurs who have already done just that to find out what their experience of bringing zero waste to the high street was, and what advice they could offer to those of us planning to follow suit.

Sasha McKinley owns The Emporium of Worldly Goods in Fort William, Scotland. Selling fair trade and zero waste household items, and inspired by the writing of Bea Johnson, she began to incorporate some zero waste alternatives into her shop. Despite a desire to live more sustainably, she was finding supermarket shopping a difficult experience and zero waste options slim pickings.

She told me “knowing that all the plastic ever made is still in existence doesn’t sit right with me, and I don’t want to add more waste to the planet – there is no ‘away.’ I decided to start my own shop, where I could source the things [package free] and provide them to others.”

Finding premises was the most challenging aspect of the process for Sasha – she told me “the most likely properties for the shop were either exorbitantly priced or the landlord [was] AWOL.” But incorporating zero-waste products into her shop was easy – as her stock was already

fair trade, eco-friendly and sustainable.

There is certainly a tangible sea-change in attitudes towards zero-waste living. Sasha explains, “I’ve had people from all over the country get in touch for certain zero-waste products, which is hugely encouraging.”

Sarah Martin owns Nourish, a zero-waste store based in Topsham, Devon, UK. Sarah, a former teacher with a background in environmental sciences told me “I have been very aware of reducing my own waste and could see many others were doing the same. I was trying to shop locally rather than use the supermarket but realised there was a large amount of dry goods that I just couldn’t get packaging free. When the lease came up on the shop… I felt like fate was telling me what to do!”.

There is a school of thought that believes the zerowaste movement is too little, too late, but Sarah does not agree. Through the conversations she is having daily with customers of all ages, she has found the push to a less consumerist, less wasteful life to be strong and perceptible. I asked her if she felt this recent shift in consciousness would be enough to turn the tide on plastic. “Absolutely!” she enthused. “I have conversations with people of all ages…keen to make changes in their own lives. I am really pleased to see that parents are making changes because their children are learning about reducing plastic waste in school –a more positive ‘pester power’ than the usual consumerist agenda!”

Charlotte’s Cupboard, newly begun this year, is utilising packaging methods that were commonplace before plastic was so prevalent. Owned by Thalassa Sauvalle de Rementeria and Charley Cross and trading out of the back of a van called Peggy, they challenge widespread single use plastic by walking the talk in their own lives and supporting their customers to make small changes. They challenge the term “zero-waste” too, by not using it. It surprised me, but on reflection, “zero-waste” does have a slightly negative, impossible to reach overtone to it for many of us on the journey. Of this, Thalassa told me: “we prefer to encourage our customers to do as much as they can, and we hope that, rather than using a term that feels unattainable, by encouraging them to make small steps, in the long run, it will lead to greater change.”

The responsibility for change, they believe, is finely balanced between businesses and consumers: “Charley and I believe that businesses have a responsibility to lead the way… sooner rather than later. We talk about the power of every penny we spend, and I completely agree that individuals have the power to make change, but businesses shouldn’t be waiting around. They should stop offering single-use plastic today.”

A responsibility too falls at the feet of Government, Thalassa explained: “I think [the UK Government] need to focus on laws and greater implementation re rubbish disposal/collection [and] recycling education.”

Indeed, there is overwhelming opinion that our Governments could put measures in place to support

The Emporium of Worldly Goods 68

Nourish,

fledging zero-waste companies as well as pressure big business to look for alternatives to plastic packaging. And perhaps that is so, but there are so many brave entrepreneurs who are literally taking matters into their own hands and showing the way for big brands and market leaders to follow, that perhaps this waste revolution will happen despite the slowness of Governments to create policy in favour of those businesses that choose to reject single-use plastic.

So how to begin setting up a package-free shop? Earth.

Food.Love, based in Totnes, is owned by Nicola and Richard Eckersley and was the first zero-waste shop in the UK.

The couple responded to calls from other start-ups for advice by producing a PDF, available for free to all from their website, and covering everything from suppliers and equipment to branding and budget planning.

If you are opening a zero-

waste shop anytime soon, I’d highly recommend you read it. Thalassa and Charley of Charlotte’s Cupboard plan to do something similar – and it’s interesting to note how open to the idea of connection zero-waste businesses are, in sharing their knowledge and experience – without any hint of it being competitive. What I’ve learned from the people already running zero-waste shops is to keep things simple and to learn what your customers want by connecting with them via social media or in person at markets. I’ve learnt that research is vital but also knowing that what works in one area might not work in another - so really understanding local needs is the key to success. The planet needs less waste to be created, and in our communities, we have the chance to make it so. If you are planning to set up a zero-waste shop, have courage, and just do it! If someone in your local community sets one up, support them - with your purchases and by spreading the word of their existence. We need to make package free living the norm – because we all know now that “away” doesn’t really exist, and that we are all equally responsible for bringing positive change to this beautiful planet.

GET IN TOUCH THE EMPORIUM OF WORLDLY GOODS FB: @TheEmporiumFortWilliam IG: @the_emporium_of_worldly_goods Website: www.theemporiumofworldlygoods.co.uk NOURISH of topsham FB and IG: @nourishoftopsham Twitter: @nourish_topsham Use coupon code NoSerialNumber18 for 10% OFF on the website www.nourishoftopsham.com CHARLOTTE’S CUPBOARD Website: www.charlottescupboard.com FB: @charl0ttescupboard IG: @charlottes_cupboard

PETITIONS Petition: More Sustainable Nappies by 2020 Welcome to a new segment of our magazine dedicated to ongoing petitions and environmental campaigns. In this issue, Holly Foat looks at the problematic issue of nappies, something used by most parents for the first few years of their children’s life and a great contributor to landfill waste. We’ll follow up successful petitions with a brand new podcast where we’ll interview public figures and companies relevant to the campaigns we’re exploring. We hope to launch the podcast in our website in the coming months.

Please sign the petition or share your comments by emailing editorial@noserialnumber.org Make all nappies and baby wipes sold in the UK 100% biodegradable by 2020. Petition started

by Sarah Greenfield Clark If you’re a parent who used disposable nappies and wipes for their child, the chances are that those nappies and wipes are sat in a landfill somewhere and will be for the foreseeable future. Reusable cloth nappies and wipes are a more sustainable alternative, but they don’t work for everyone.

This petition, started by Sarah Greenfield Clark, takes the emphasis off the consumer having to choose and puts the pressure on the manufacturers to consider the end of life of their products.

Sarah explains in the petition that “8 million disposable nappies are dumped each day in the UK and will be on earth 5 times longer than the babies that used them,” which is truly shocking. She goes on to say that by “making all disposable nappies and wipes biodegradable would reduce their environmental impact and increase parental access to less damaging products.”

Sarah Greenfield Clark (also known as Sustainable Sarah) has started a petition to the UK government to address the issue of nappies and wipes in landfill. She’d like to see all disposable nappies and wipes on sale in the UK be 100% biodegradable. I contacted Sarah about the petition and she explained to me that she realised early on in her exploration of sustainability, that “personal change has to be met by wider system change, from our governments and industries who shape the society that we must navigate.” I couldn’t agree more!

The UK has recently announced that it plans on banning wipes. So far very few details of this have been available.

We’re assuming that biodegradable wipes won’t be included.

It is hoped that this petition could clarify the issues. My concern with a blanket ban on wipes is that it will be cash strapped parents that will suffer. It seems like a knee jerk reaction to a massively complex issue. For example, after a ban is introduced, does the government expect everyone to switch to reusable wipes? What about the impacts of washing and drying fabric wipes? Or will biodegradable wipes become the norm? If so, will they be the same prices as regular wipes or will parents be expected to pay the higher prices? So many questions are left unanswered.

Sarah had this in mind when creating the petition, “to become mainstream, the eco products must truly price match with those causing environmental harm. To achieve this there needs to be some incentive (or deterrent) that encourages all manufacturers to stop them using cheap plastics in place of natural alternatives.”

This petition is very well put together; Sarah hasn’t been unreasonable, she’s suggested that a change is enforced by

2020. “I realised that I needed to identify a tangible issue that affects a number of people on a daily basis. The issue of plastic, landfills and waste is public high priority right now, and the idea to start a movement against disposable nappies was inspired by this trend that I credit to the sheer number of people moved by watching Blue Planet II.” Inadvertently, this petition is calling for more transparency in the industry. It is often difficult to find out what nappies and wipes are made of. Many of the top brands of nappies use a ‘super absorbent gel’ (a type of plastic) in nappies as well as other materials like polyester. Even the brands that label their nappies ‘eco’ often still use similar materials, just less of them and many are 65%, 70% or 80% biodegradable. Even in the right conditions, these nappies will never degrade fully. However, there are other benefits to eco nappies.

Manufacturers of biodegradable nappies are more likely to use more natural fibres, less chemicals and be more considerate to the environment in terms of packaging.

Most eco brands are taking steps in the right direction, but not many are fully biodegradable yet. If this petition reached parliament and was enforced, there would be a real incentive for nappies to change. Whilst this still won’t address the other issues with landfill sites, Sarah sees it as a start. “Whilst this alone would not solve the problem, it would show the government and the manufacturing industry that the wave of change is here and they must act now, not only on nappies and wipes, but on all things that we have come to rely on.”

“To get this debated in parliament would trigger the necessary conversations about the limits facing consumers” Sarah explains, “The public cannot begin to contribute to the repair of the environment & pollution problems when they are confronted with plastic in all their purchases. The government must demand manufacturers improve or pay damages. We have the science, just not the policy. If all the wipes and nappies had to change to incorporate natural materials, this would drive down the price of buying eco-friendly and make green living more accessible to all.”

Changing the littered and polluted face of our planet will be a long and slow process. Steps are already in place, this seems like another step in the right direction to me.

Check out Sarah’s petition here, please sign and share it.

www.petition.parliament.uk/petitions/217298 GET IN TOUCH Website: www.sustainablesarah.uk Twitter: @climate_sarah Instagram: sustainablesarah.uk Facebook: @sustainablesarah

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I s s u e s for ethical Businesses

What?

how?

In the past three months, No Serial Number Magazine has been following discussions in our Facebook group. In each issue, we collect some of the comments made by small artisanal business owners to share their experiences, doubts and tips about running a sustainable business. If you’d like your comment to be published in the next issue, please email editorial@noserialnumber.org SOURCING FABRICS AND MATERIALS Josephine Hart Something I struggle with is ethical sourcing (of fabrics) I am constantly confused by the different phrases, eg. Oeko tex, organic, bamboo fibre etc and whether these things are actually good for the planet (or even less harmful). So is organic cotton a good option? Does oekto-tex cotton mean organic? How can I trust different suppliers? How can I be sure that I am supporting good ethical practices overseas? Are alternative fabrics (lyocell, bamboo etc) really any better for the planet, or are those practices destroying water systems (or maybe I should not read everything I find on Facebook!)

Jay Green-Mauk Mostly I spin wool and sell a finished product like a crocheted hat or woven shawl at fairs and such. I buy my wool mostly raw from small flock/sustainable producers that either I have been able to check out or have been introduced to by a trusted source. I rarely package but I do take a stack of paper bags I’m reusing from groceries for people to use and I am getting into upcycling some cloth bags for this summer.

Nappies by Itty Bitty Bums www.ittybittybums.com.au

Sara Siegel There are some great and simple explanations about what guidelines and requirements are behind different standards and certifications. I’ve often seen simple charts with checkboxes or Xs comparing different certifications with various criteria.

WATER USAGE Julie Watson My biggest issue is the amount of water I use to wash fleece. At least 40 litres a batch, sometimes more if it is very dirty. I can opt to buy some fleece that has been commercially washed and combed in a small family run mill. Economies of scale mean that they use less water this way. So at present I do a bit of both but I’d prefer to process it all myself.

Jay Green-Mauk I do several first soaks in the same water to loosen the dirt. And I reuse water in the yard/garden. My new 2 bucket method has cut my water use way down though.

Janette Theobald I also use water. I find the water business confusing. According to my high school science lessons, the water cycle naturally delivers and renews water. It is only when it goes through the city delivery and cleansing system that it is un-eco friendly- adding energy/cost- assuming we do not contaminate it.

So if we are using rain water responsibly it shouldn’t be a problem.

Thoughts?

WORLDWIDE

Do you know of a petition you would like us to cover In the magazine?

Send us an email to info@noserialnumber.org

Jay Green-Mauk Janette Theobald It depends on where the water comes from. I’m in Eastern Nebraska and the city water in Lincoln is not on a threatened aquifer, but if I was further west on a threatened aquifer or someplace like Arizona, water use might be a much bigger issue. If I was on a rural area I would look at getting a grey water settling pond for reusing for first soaks.

Sonya Robinson I’m in an area where water is a premium, even with the river flowing, when water is diverted for industry, residential, agriculture it changes the volume of water flowing. The diverted water does not really go back to the river, it evaporates, it goes under ground etc.

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ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

P R O J E C TS F O R Words by Holly Foat Photography by Posti-plasto, Elliot for Water and Demalou When the world seems a little dark and scary, and advertisers are clamouring for you to spend your money on their products, browsing through ethical crowdsourcing campaigns can provide light and relief. There are many projects running that help and support people, minimise impact on the environment and celebrate diversity, culture and creativity. I wish I could cover far more in this article but due to the short nature of many of the campaigns, unfortunately, many finish before we’d even be able to get in contact with the founders. We have personally been in touch with the pioneers of these three projects (as well as several others) and we think you’d love to support them too. We have on trend air plants holders made from bioplastic, a search engine that funds clean water projects and a functional bikini maker using recycled materials. If you’d like to see the full list of projects we’ve promoted in the magazine and what happened to them, visit this page: www.noserialnumber.org/projects-for-the-planet.

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POSTI-PLASTO

cannot be recycled with regular plastic. This is partly why industrial designers Vanessa Rey and Ariel Lynne started this project: to raise awareness of the circular nature of bioplastics and create a buzz about this sustainable material. I really want to try making my own now!

www.kickstarter.com/ projects/1168644851/postiplasto-compostable-air-plant-holders We all want to be kind to the environment, but sometimes it would be nice to have something new and not feel we have to own it forever. Disposable is bad, right? But what Ariel Lynne and Vanessa Rey, the people behind Posti-plasto, have created is unusual because it is disposable, with a limited lifespan, designed to be on trend for a season and then thrown away when you want something different. The great thing here is that it is a bioplastic that will break down in a normal household compost bin.

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ELLIOT FOR WATER www.theupeffect.com/elliotforwater

Not only is this a great campaign, it’s on a social enterprise platform that I haven’t discovered yet! The Up Effect (www. theupeffect.com) is a crowdfunding platform like kickstarter but all the projects are designed to improve people’s lives and benefit the environment. Created by 24-year-old Andrea Demichelis, Elliot for Water is search engine that generates revenue via adverts. The search engine works just like a normal one, with search results provided by Bing. 60% of the profits are spent on clean water projects in developing countries. In collaboration with WellFound, a British charity, Elliot for Water have started their first water project in GuineaBissau that they hope to finish once they’ve received the

The kickstarter campaign offers a choice of their compostable plant holders, all inspired by natural shapes and coloured with a natural dye. They say that “Using natural dyes is important to us because our product is entirely compostable, and a lot of store bought food dyes have toxic chemicals in them, one being petroleum. Biomimicry is a tool we used to inspire our forms because we wanted the products to feel like they related to composting, but in a subtle and thoughtful way.”

They also offer kits to create your own bioplastic plant holders. Bioplastics have huge potential to reduce plastic waste in landfill. They’re created from edible products such as vinegar and starch, and will completely biodegrade in a compost bin. The issue with mainstream plastic use switching to bioplastic is that if many compostable items when thrown into landfill won’t break down in that environment. It also 72

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THE PLANET funding via Kickstarter.

the idea with recycled materials was born.”

The campaign aims to raise £80,000 through crowdfunding to sustain Elliot for Water for 12 months, by which time it should be able to sustain itself and fund the water projects with the sheer number of people using it.

Andrea’s intention wasn’t to provide clean water in this way; he moved to Paris to study and start working as a Stockbroker after High School.

However, his plans soon changed as he realised that he could create a different type of business where success could fund giving back.

Made by Carvico labs, the Vita fabric is 78% made of Econyl which is a 100% regenerated polyamide fibre from postconsumer materials. The fabric is highly resistant to damage from chlorine, and also resistant to sun cream and oil meaning that the bikinis have a longer lifespan than many of the others available. The bikinis are reversible, with solid colour one side and a bright nature inspired print the other, “the things I connect most with summer are colors and flowers, so it was quite an easy to decide on the fabric designs of my bikinis. I wanted them to give you a happy feeling whenever you grab one.”

My only concern with this is that it may not be clear to everyone that the funding raised here is to fund the search engine, not directly to the water projects. Whilst I understand that once the search engine has gained popularity and has reached a certain level of use, it will be self sufficient and able to fund many more water projects, there is a level of risk involved. If you are purely interested in funding the water projects directly, then donate to www.wellfound.org.uk.

Do you have your own project on a crowdfunding platform? Know of a great crowdfunding campaign?

Let us know here: editorial@noserialnumber.org

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I love these designs and the care and attention that has gone into the creation of the fabric. I’ve already asked Friedy for a tankini version! The Demalou bikinis are available to buy online via her online store at www.demalou.com.

DE M A LO U www.kickstarter.com/projects/673031955/ demalou-the-surf-bikini-with-a-green-soul

A durable bikini suitable for sports that is sustainably made?

Sounds too good to true! But this is what Friederike Steiner has created. Frustrated with not being able to find a bikini that didn’t flash her buns to everyone on the beach, Friedy was encouraged to create her own.

She decided that her bikini should also be a green option, made from recycled materials. Friedy explains that the reason he decided to go for recycled material “came up after reading an article in the SCMP stating that in Hong Kong 5.2 Million plastic bottles are being thrown away every day”. He adds, “I was really shocked and immediately decided to do something about it, so 73

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

THE ECO CRAFTERS AND ENTREPRENEURS’ AWARD Welcome to the third edition of the ‘Eco Crafters and Entrepreneurs’ Awards! We have selected four winners for the Summer edition of this competition, if you’d like to view the work of all contestants, then you can visit this page on our website: www.noserialnumber.org/directory/award-summer-2018 To view ongoing work by our members you can also join the Facebook group ‘Eco-friendly Crafters and Entrepreneurs’ (www.facebook.com/groups/Eco.Designers). The next competition will take place in August 2018, join and participate for a chance to feature amongst the winners in the Autumn issue!

GRAŻYNA OSSOWSKA, GO CERAMIKA AUTORSKA

EXHIBITIONS AND WORKSHOPS

She studied Architecture at Warsaw Technical University and is currently studying ceramics DESCRIPTION: Ceramic/twig spoons combine two natural materials.

Both materials require a completely different approach in terms of the tools and skills required to craft. Combined together, they naturally complement each other creating an artistic piece that is pleasing to look at and use.

HOW THE PRODUCT WAS MADE: It is a project that requires patience and time. In winter, during maintenance cutting, Grażyna collects twigs from trees in her garden. They are being decorticated and set aside to dry. In her studio she makes ceramic spoons, dry them, bake them in a low fire, glaze them and then finally bake them again in high fire. When the twigs are ready she makes a matching stub for each spoon and eco glue both pieces together. She sands the handles to finish off the spoons.

INTERESTING FACTS: Grażyna makes the ceramic part by pressing clay in her fingers so the shapes come out naturally. The resulting shapes are all different. Depending on the kind of tree the twigs come from there is a different amount of work required as they vary in hardness.

ADVICE: The spoons may be used as decorative as well as functional pieces.

Get in touch with Grażyna Instagram: @goceramikaautorska Facebook: @GO.ceramika.autorska 74

“Boso po Rosie” 28.07.2018 an upcoming solo exhibition at Fine Arts Gallery “Szary Ganek” in Pruszcz Gdański, Poland (www.facebook.com/ events/1514883765296486/) “Spring Impressions” 27.04.2018 – group exhibition together with my workshop groups at Gdański Archipelag Kultury, Dom Sztuki, Gdańsk, Poland “Kalejdoskop – rękodzieło” 17.02.2018 group exhibition at Gdański Archipelag Kultury, Dom Sztuki, Gdańsk, Poland Grażyna holds “Holistic Ceramic Workshops” on a regular basis, both in group and individual settings. The workshops feature the author’s idea of immersing the body and mind in the creative and therapeutic activities of working with clay. The agenda focuses on mild body activities, internal vibrations, breathing and intuitive, creative work that allows us to find our inner child. The calming music accompanies the activities while herbal teas are served. The overall experience slows down the pace of everyday life so participants can relax and strengthen and energize themselves for the days to come.

JOIN US ONLINE: www.facebook.com/groups/Eco.Designers SOON TOWN Eco printer and felter, designing and producing unique items to beautify lives. Living and dyeing in a small mountain village in Greece where the cycles of nature determine the rhythm of her life in an everyday adventure of experiment and learning. Her garden and the area around her village give generously: leaves and flowers are gathered with respect and bundled lovingly, the steaming cauldron does its work and mother nature performs her magic… each time the opening is a revelation! This process is part of a journey in which Soo feels privileged and awed to participate.

DESCRIPTION OF WORK: Soo dyes fabrics (including hand felted wool), paper and “vegan leather” using natural materials and prints them with designs created from leaves and

flowers, using heat and steam. From these she produces items for the home and to wear which aim to be both useful and beautiful (according to the guidelines of the very talented William Morris) and some of them can be found in her shop, SalkimiCreations on Etsy.

HOW THE PRODUCT WAS MADE: Child’s dress - hand made of silk noil.

The fabric was naturally dyed and eco printed with leaves and flowers gathered around her village and then sewn into a dress for her granddaughter. Designed and sewn

by Soo Town.

Get in touch with Soo via Facebook: @Salkimicreations Etsy shop: SalkimiCreations

THE TOPIAN DEN EMAJANE PIXIE RAINBOW Emajane is a self-taught artist and designer. She first became inspired to customise and upcycle her own clothing during her teenage years... She found this to be a perfect way to combine her love for creating and experimenting with her other personal self-expression. Emajane lives in South West Wales and works from home, creating clothing, bags and accessories using recycled pre-loved cashmere, wool vintage skirts and denim jeans to create her one of a kind designs. She makes her designs in a playful style... including an element of quirkiness with a unique twist, which she feels gives each of her designs a

personality of its own...

DESCRIPTION: Whimsical Jumper Tunic Top with a snood style hood. Made from recycling preloved knitwear, a vintage wool skirts and corduroy trousers. The appliqué design was created using oddments of woollen yarn and left over scrap pieces of fabric, and then decorated with buttons.

HOW THE PRODUCT WAS MADE: Emanaje always starts with a jumper as the main body… She free styles her designs so she doesn’t use a pattern. She begins by cutting away the bottom section of the jumper and also cuts the sleeves about 3/4 of the way up from the cuff. Emanaje then starts adding other knitwear, almost like a puzzle to create the body shape. One of the key features on her designs is the appliqué art, that has been created using the left over pieces of fabric so nothing goes to waste! She used a wool skirts to add the flared sleeves and shape the edge of the snood hood, and another skirt is added to the bottom to create the hem.

INTERESTING FACTS: Every garment is a potential new item of clothing, bag or accessory! Even something with marks or holes can be turned into something new… the smallest thing she makes is cashmere hair scrunchies…

She also uses tiny pieces of fabric for appliqué art!

ADVICE: Emanaje only uses quality materials as her goal is to make slow fashion that is made to last… She uses a domestic overlocker and sewing machine which she finds suitable for creating all of her designs. Emanaje finds upcycling an inspiring way to create and her advice would be ‘to just have fun, I don’t think that you can ever get it wrong when creating this way!’

Get in touch with Emajane Website - www.thetopianden.uk Etsy - www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheTopianDen Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest: @thetopianden Twitter - @TheTopianDen

ISSUE 13 SUMMER 2018

SHARRON BARTON Having been sewing as long as she can remember, hating waste just as long and having an obsession with textiles, Sharron combined the three together to create Losana B when it was obvious her old career was over due to caring responsibilities.

Sharron makes mainly bags from fabrics reclaimed from clothing and household textiles or from old/ dead stock. Sometimes the fabric tells her it wants to be something else or it isn’t suitable for bags. She still rescues it so she does not make only bags.

HOW THE PRODUCT WAS MADE: This bag is a prototype for a custom order designed specifically to fit and carry a piece of equipment along with all the cables and accessories, folders and files my customer needed for her work. It was created using a remnant piece of upholstery fabric from a whole load of rolls of such fabric found in an industrial unit when a new tenant moved it. They were about to skip the lot when she heard about it and bought the fabric instead! The padding is a pre-loved fleece blanket (entirely contained to minimise the fibre shedding), the flap another remnant piece and the lining was once a sheet. The only brand new components are thread, rivets and the magnetic fastening as her aim is to minimise the use of new products at all times. This bag is also machine washable as it is entirely stitched with no glue being used which also allows it to be deconstructed and recycled again at end of life in this form.

GET IN TOUCH WITH SHARRON: Website: www.losanab.co.uk Facebook: @losanab.uk Instagram and Pinterest: @losanab Twitter: @LosanaB

INTERESTING FACTS: There are vast amounts of perfectly good, re-usable fabrics in even seemingly worn out clothing. Even some that don’t seem re-usable (bobbly fleece blankets for instance) can be – they make excellent backing and padding layers.

ADVICE: Even the tiniest pieces of fabric can be re-used by reconstructing them into new sheet fabric. Look at your worn out/unfashionable clothing and textiles in a different way – as fabric, not end product, to see the potential remaining in it even though you’re finished with it as it is.

Are you an artisan, a designer, an upcycler or an eco-friendly business owner and would like to appear here?

Join our Facebook Group ‘Eco-Friendly Crafters and Entrepreneurs’, and start a conversation for a chance to be shortlisted for our seasonal awards!

We look forward to meeting you there! www.facebook.com/groups/ Eco.Designers 76

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Do you want your green product to feature here?

Send us an email to info@noserialnumber.org

Eco-Friendly Ideas Eco-friendly products carefully selected for you!

NATURAL BEAUTY & WELLBEING

RE-USABLE HANDMADE BEESWAX FOOD WRAPS by BeeInspired Skincare These wraps are all the buzz in New Zealand and Australia for wrapping food as they keep food fresh and moist with no need for, plastic bags, boxes or aluminium foil. Following the suggestion of a local crafter who’d just returned from the Antipodes we just had to introduce these to our ‘hive products’ range. Using the beeswax from our neighbour Keith and other bee-keeping buddies, Keith’s sister Alison is making them for us. Whilst we were planning the making of these Alison and her family had come to the conclusion, as so many of us have, that we must reduce our consumption and thoughtless use of plastic. Our wraps are designed to wrap sandwiches or cover any food or leftovers, with the exception of raw meat or fish. Either wrap the food or cover containers with these flexible cloths. Use the warmth of your hands to seal the wrap. Beeswax does not absorb smells nor bacteria which is why these are so perfect! To clean, just wash in cool or cold water with a little mild detergent and air dry. When your wrap looks worn out simply place on a piece of baking parchment in a cool oven (110 0c) for a few minutes to refresh. Use and re-use – save the planet 1 wrap at a time!

Made from 100% cotton and pure local beeswax – nothing else Each pack contains 3 wraps of different size: 30 x 30cm – great for sandwiches, cold meats etc 25 x 25cm – covering bowls, wrapping cheeses etc 20 x 20cm – wrapping individual fruit, onions, vegetables small bowls.

1 pack, assorted fabric designs, £14.50

SOAPS We hand-make a range of soaps, in a variety of fragrances. Our natural hand-sized soaps are made with vegetable oils (certified organic) and beeswax. They are all gently cleansing, with little lather, as they are free from SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate), SLES (sodium laureth sulphate) and MPG (monopropylene glycol).

The following are available: Lavender: Lavender essential oil has a soothing and calming effect on the skin as well as nerves and also relieves muscular and rheumatic aches and pains.

Bergamont, sandalwood and pine: Bergamot balances the skin, being particularly good for oily types and can be useful for eczema and psoriasis apparently. It also is uplifting and eases anxiety. Sandalwood can help greatly with dry, chapped or irritated skin because of its fantastic moisturising properties. Great for fighting tricky oily skin as well as having anti-ageing benefits to boot. Pine is anti-fungal and antiseptic as well as being refreshing and restorative.

Geranium and orange: Geranium & orange essential oils are uplifting and refreshing as well as great for toning combination skin.

Lemongrass: Refreshing, light and ‘citrusy’, Lemongrass essential oil is added for its refreshing and slightly astringent properties, beneficial for toning muscles and skin as well as being revitalising.

Fragrance-free: All the goodness and deliciousness of our fragranced soaps, but even more gentle on skin which can’t be doing with extra frills.

Our soaps come in one handy pebble-shaped size - perfect for your hands. They cost £6 each Website: www.beeinspiredcreams.buzz FB: @beeinspiredcreams Twitter: @BeeInspiredbuzz Instagram: @beeinspired_natural_skincare

TROBOJE

by Saulė Nikontė Founder of a brand Troboje (en. ‘in the cabin’) in 2014.

BA in printmaking, now a homesteader, organic gardener, up-cycler.

Settled in the Lithuanian countryside, she shares the idea of simplicity by reconnecting with nature, slowing down and focusing on herself and her surroundings.

She follows a zero waste lifestyle to live in harmony with nature, and minimising her footprint for future generations.

She specialises in quality items that are simple, useful, recyclable or compostable, made to become a part of your home. These organic soy wax candles and eco-friendly gifts for the home are original, useful, eco-friendly and guilt free.

They do not require new materials or resources because they are 100% reclaimed, natural, biodegradable and recyclable. Saulė makes handmade and upcycled interior accessories, home decor from handmade fabric yarn baskets and rugs to organic soy wax candles. She saves pre-owned fabrics, reclaimed yarn, old knits, glass jars or ceramic containers from the landfill and transforms them into new items. All her items are made with love, care and the environment in mind.

HOW THE PRODUCT WAS MADE: Saulė collects, washes, cuts, sands, polishes and washes again glass bottles (some of these bottles have been lying outside for 30+ years so heat resistance is checked by using a heat gun to prevent accidents). Then she sets the wick in place, melts the wax in a double boiler, pours in natural soy wax, lets it cure for 48 hours. After that, she inspects the item and then cuts the wick. Finally she wraps the candle and packs it. She uses only natural soy wax, fair trade products that are palm oil free and contain no pesticides, herbicides, or GM materials.

Her candles are dermatologicaly approved.

INTERESTING FACTS: All bottles have been collected while walking her dog at a regional park. They are not suitable for deposit return, but completely suitable for recycling after burning the candle.

ANY TIPS/ADVICE: Always follow candle handling and fire safety instructions.

Etsy shop: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Troboje FB, Instagram and Pinterest: @troboje

Use the coupon code NOSERIALNUMBER for 10% OFF TROBOJE Etsy shop valid until 23 08 2018

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Festival of Natural Fibres 8th of September 2018 at Crafts Central, London, UK Organised by the Khadi Initiative Textile and fashion can be a force for good and a vehicle for change.

Gandhi’s use of khadi for political and economic organisation in India’s nonviolent freedom movement was a masterstroke. Khadi helped create a new nationalist identity – neither the traditional hierarchical nor a colonial one which was coming into vogue in the early 20th Century.

Alas, as we are witnessing today, textile can also be a force for destruction.

Statistics presented by Ellen MacArthur Foundation show that if the present trend continues, the textile industry will add 22 million tons of microfibres to the ocean, will have a 26% share of the carbon budget and consume 300 million tons of oil by 2050. Scary!

If we act now – this can change – textile can become a force for good.

Nature has the answers – we just need to listen to them. An amazing array of fibres and dyes – and ways of using them for fabric in less harmful ways.

Good for the environment, great for the global community of artisans and friendly for your skin.

COME AND JOIN US on the 8TH OF SEPTEMBER at Crafts Central, a stunning venue for events and studio space for creatives – facilitated by Freeweaver SAORI Studio and organised by the Khadi Initiative in collaboration with a wide and growing network. An exhibit on the walls, which will be a prominent feature of the event will be on display from the 5th to the 9th September 2018. There will be practical crafts workshops on the 9th September. . www.khadi.london/khadi-initiative

Photography by Khamir

Kala Cotton picking from field

Kala pod

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Summer Competition

The Resurgence of Natural Dyes with Zoë Burt and Lara Mantell NSN Team has lanuched a series of monthly meetups.

During our first event we focused on an area that we know well as it has being a reccuring subject in our magazines since the very early stages of the project: natural dyes.

Share your opinions and ideas about NSN magazine and you will be entered in a draw to win Natural Journal .....

Simply type the address www.noserialnumber.org/summer2018 and answer a few questions to enter.

During the event Zoë and Lara talked us through their experiences with natural dyes and gave us an interesting insight into what can be achieved with these dyes and how potentially they could revutionalise the fashion industry.

A winner will be selected in September 2018

You can join our events onsite and online as all the events will be livestreamed on our social media pages.

So join us every last Thursday of the month, we look forward to seeing and hearing from you then!

www.noserialnumber.org/summer2018

JUNE 2018 EVENT Coming soon ...

THE ECO PRINT WORKBOOK • Over 150 pages of content • Lots of tutorials • Different techniques and materials • Tools of the artist • Plenty of space for note taking • Extensive directory

www.noserialnumber.org/events 79

A mAGAZINE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRAFT MOVEMENT Why the name “No Serial Number”?

Because nature and craft share a common characteristic, they are not made in series. They are both the result of an organic, slow process of growth and development. Not one leaf is the same, nor is a handmade creation. Crafts remind us that our hands and minds can work in tune with our natural environment to make things that are useful, or simply beautiful. As a society, we are in urgent need to slow down and preserve our collective environmental and artisanal heritages from unsustainable production practices and corporate greed. No Serial Number Magazine is a humble attempt to explore how creativity, nature, activism and business intersect in contemporary society.

Who is it for? artists, artisans, casual makers, craftivists, and conscious citizens Topics textile arts • natural colours • traditional trades and crafts • creative upcycling and salvaging • slow fashion • zero-waste lifestyle • biodiversity • kitchen chronicles • grassroots environmental movements INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED BY NO SERIAL NUMBER ISSN 2516-1776 (Print) ISSN 2516-1784 (Online)

No Serial Number Magazine www.noserialnumber.org info@noserialnumber.org Fb: www.facebook.com/noserialnumbermagazine Twitter: @N0serialnumberM Use #NoSerialNumber Pinterest: noserialnumber Instagram: @noserialnumber.com_magazine £9 + Delivery Printed on recycled paper at UEL Printers