My other cufflink is a Corvette

Right: a pair of Fordite cufflinks by Florida-based jeweller Pamela Huizenga

Dried paint deposits harvested from automotive production lines are being polished up and transformed into valuable gemstones. Dagenham agate, anyone?

Words by Alex Moore

22 "Fordite" is the name given to layers of automotive spray-paint that over a decade or more, dry and harden to form a beautiful gem-like substance. It’s also known as Detroit agate or motor agate, as most of it can be traced back to the car factories of Michigan’s Motor City. Since the 1960s, resourceful factory employees have periodically pocketed the hardened overspray that accumulates in the tracks and skids of the painting bays, often when the models are changed. They had no prescribed use for this brightly coloured deposit, other than as a psychedelic ornament; it just seemed a shame to throw it away.

Eagle-eyed lapidarist Pamela Huizenga stumbled across a raw piece at an auction in 2003. “The guy selling it had no idea what it was,” she recalls. “I did. I offered him ten bucks and he almost bit my hand off.” That piece would now be worth around 30-40 times that sum, largely thanks to Huizenga and other jewellers cutting, shaping and polishing Fordite

into ornate designs that challenge what we define as precious. “I love to use old and unique items in my jewellery,” explains Huizenga, who also uses hemimorphite, fossilised coral and rutilated quartz in her pendants and rings. “Wearable history is beautiful. It means a lot, and it has a certain energy. Fordite is the epitome of reuse and recycle.”

Of course, not all Fords are built in Detroit. On this side of the pond, Manchester-based jeweller Ian Barrett has singlehandedly exhausted the supply of Dagenham agate from Ford’s now defunct Beam Park plant (it’s interesting to note the more conservative palette of British cars when compared with Huizenga’s work). Nor were Ford’s factories the only ones to create this fascinating material.

“For the past few years I’ve been using a lot of Corvettite,” says Huizenga, “particularly from the early 2000s, where you get a lot of really delicious metallic blues and reds, and

gorgeous bright yellows.” She’s quick to point out that while the raw material might be sold as “circa 2000”, the paint could well have been building up for a decade prior to that date. “My most recent collection of cufflinks and lapel pins is made from a stunning Corvettite gathered in 2004 from the Bowling Green Assembly Plant in Kentucky,” she adds.

It’s this provenance that really gets engines revving. Most of Huizenga’s customers are either petrolheads or hail from the area where the agate was harvested, although she claims motor agate’s popularity is now reaching a less niche market. “Modern technologies have meant that paint techniques have evolved, and so Fordite will run out,” explains Huizenga. “You can’t just make your own. This is an incredibly expensive commercial by-product that someone was smart enough to capitalise on. Right now, it’s more popular than ever because people are realising that there isn’t an endless supply.”