’Nature Lab’

The work of six emerging British craft talents, including 2015 Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon prize winner Marcin Rusak, are being cast in the spotlight at Design Miami/ Basel with the Design Curio programme.

Nature Lab, a joint initiative from the British Crafts Council and London-based gallery, The New Craftsmen, focuses on the work of  six emerging talents all of whom use everyday substances - like wood, sand, salt, clay, flowers and ice - to transform the natural into objects of wonder using radical new techniques; thereby turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Joseph Harrington's Lost Ice Process, for instance, uses salt to sculpt ice into an ephemeral model from which he casts glass. Eleanor Lakelin sandblast, bleaches, scorches and even micro-waves British wood to show the passing of time. Marlene Huissoud teams bee resin with traditional Venetian glassblowing techniques while Jochen Holz specialises in free blowing clear boroscilicate glass using now rare techniques of lampworking.

To display thier experimental creations, designer Gitta Gschwendtner has built an immersive – and fittingly abstract – 'night lab', furnished with highly refined science-class ephemera: glass retorts, funnels, and flasks where the extraordinary results of these material innovations can come into their own.