Materialism

Year: 2013
Dimensions shelves: 60 x 40 x 3 cm
Materials: ceramics, glass, metal
Photography: Raw Color
Made possible by: BKKC, Provincie Noord-Brabant and Gemeente Eindhoven

 

Materialism is the name of a project by Studio Mieke Meijer designed for the exhibition Revaluate bycollective Dutch Invertuals. The designers were asked to translate the theme of value into projects or products. The exhibition was facilitated by different workshops processing ceramics, metals and glass. The results were presented during the Dutch Design Week 2013 in Eindhoven.

Studio Mieke Meijer took the diminution of tactile materials in our environment as a starting point. Each material has a different economic value. But how do we value materials personally in aphysical way just by looking and feeling them?

The concept couldn’t be more simple; using a flat surface as a canvas to show the richness of raw materials. Slabs of material, all the same size and thickness, like large material samples.
The materials processed in the different workshops have a few things in common: first that, they all need extreme high temperatures to be transformed. Second that theyall are plastic at some point in the process. Third that all three materials are available as sheetgoods produced efficiently inindustrialized processes, with perfect and clean products as a result.

Making sheet materials in an artisan way proved to be a challenge and asks a lot a of patience and skill. By using one-sided open molds, highly tactile surfaces occur which show the raw, material richness that is normally lost in industrial processes. The collection of over 20 pieces contains different types of ceramics, fused glass, cast metals.

Presented in a steel frame, the slabs of material function as interchangeable shelves.