Explorations in Surface Manipulation

This week we are highlighting two Israel-born designers whose work is driven by textures and material research.

Both featured in Mint’s White Canvas exhibition, material exploration and surface manipulation is an intrinsic part of their work. Continue reading to find out more about Michal Fargo’s Stone Vessels and Cutting Tools, and Talia Mukmel’s Terra Cotta #2.2 pieces.

Michal Fargo

Stone Vessels at White Canvas, © Inge Clemente

Born in Israel and now working and living in London, designer Michal Fargo is recent graduate from the Royal College of Art Ceramics and Glass course. Michal’s work explores the thin line that lies between imitation and interpretation, driven by textures, materials, shapes and surfaces.

Using naïve, sometimes even barbaric, working methods while handling industrial materials, Michal tries to capture a longing for authentic nature, while celebrating progress and its many benefits. Her main ambition is to pursue authenticity and a personal aesthetic perception.

Stone VesselsMichal’s stone vessels are made by carving into blocks of clay, presenting an opposite process to the natural formation of a stone. The process tells a story of a manmade stone made from an engineered and extruded block of clay, transformed into a vessel resembling a wild stone. Through this process, the designer’s thoughts of our industrialised world are expressed.

“I do enjoy the fruits of progress and yet sometimes, I would like to reverse the process and instead of creating slick and elegant shapes, I like to use this collection of minerals and feldspars that are industrially combined into clay and take them back to their initial natural form.”

Cutting Tools

This collection of tools was initiated by Michal’s interest in stone tool aesthetic. Michal researched the morphology of cutting objects while trying to create different surface manipulations. Cutting Tools made of Parian, a type of bisque porcelain imitating marble.

Playing with the practical and aesthetic definitions and using cave man aesthetics as a starting point, the designs evolved, making them contemporary and relevant to today. There is a visual evolution between each knife, one leads to another and would not exist without its sibling.

Talia Mukmel

Terra Cotta#2.2 at White Canvas, © Inge Clemente

As a third-generation member of a family of textile designers and producers, Talia Mukmel has been exposed to the process of utilizing materials for self-production or crafting since childhood. Her passion has been to research a wide variety of materials in quest of new textures to be used in her work as a craft designer, seeking to find the essence of the material that gives an object its identity and meaning.

“My goal as a designer is to continue my material-philosophic research in an attempt to dismantle and reconnect the habitual processes which have led us to refrain from asking questions.”

The materials and shapes used are almost primitive in nature, fashioned into three-dimensional objects, modified to express a contemporary vision.

Terra Cotta #2.2

Terra Cotta #2.2 is an ongoing philosophical research that has striven Talia to combine material and cultural motives coming from primitive eras, together with modern industrial processing methods.

Mixture of sand and flour © Ben Yuster

Using common materials, sand and flour, used throughout history by the majority of people, the project has been developed from previous experiments with the materials.

Metal grid giving form © Ben Yuster

Talia strived to give the mixture a structure, and so designed a metal grid that is photo etched, filled with the mixture and oven baked.

The use of sand and flour is crucial for this research. Flour is mostly made up of starch, which is the main element that allows the grains of sand to stick together. The mixture of these elements swells up in the “baking process” to a unique pattern so that no two bowls are exactly the same.

Both designers should be commended for their great work, using the materials to express a form unlike before. For any further info please contact info@mintshop.co.uk