Materials Inspiration
I’m working with a stellar material at the moment
You may be familiar with my Swarf collection – it was one of the best sellers at my market this weekend. Metal swarf is basically a waste material resulting from machining processes. The brass swarf I use is waste from a local nut and bolt manufacturer.
I’ve also worked with waste bronze from a foundary producing large scale public art.
At a recent market I was approached by a scientist working at the Astrophysics Research Institute at Liverpool John Moores University. She is part of a team designing and building a new Liverpool Telescope to be sited in La Palma near the existing one. They are producing aluminium swarf during the process and she was curious to know if I could create something with it.
I now have a small container of this beautiful material in my workshop and have just started prototyping with it.
I often have new materials sitting in my workshop for some time before they make their way to become part of a new collection. (I’ll share some other materials with you in future newsletters).
I love the stories behind my collections and their materials and got to share them recently at a ‘Meet the Maker’ event at the Bluecoat Display Centre in Liverpool. I took some Swarf along and chatted about how different metals respond differently to being milled and that this makes their swarf unique. So far I’ve worked with bronze, brass, steel and aluminium.
