For COS we created a library of 300 unique porcelain vessels that take inspiration from the fall collection theme “Spectacular Nature”.

Erosion is an installation that chronicles the permeation of water and nature into discarded plaster moulds that Julie & Jesse collected over the course of several months from porcelain tea ware factories across Jingdezhen, China, city known as the Chinese capital of porcelain.

After accumulating moulds in numbers that would allow them to mass-produce, the duo setup a factory to manufacture thousands of unique wares casting porcelain slip into the moulds to record direct impressions of the traces left by erosion.

“The plaster moulds we’ve collected have become receptacles recording time, place and growth as nature erodes and reshapes them.”

The making process permanently captures the passing of time and place into the pieces and explores the interaction between the natural and material world. Each cast exists as a memory of a moment where Julie & Jesse interrupted the weathering of the moulds. The vessels are a manifestation of the invisible. They are a display of a natural occurrence and deliver an aesthetic breaking away from the archetypes of Chinese porcelain decorated with representations of an idealised vision of nature.

“Our ‘making process’ perpetuates and elaborates the designs the tea ware factories were producing – it gives new life to the moulds, turning flaws into a desirable design and the manufacturing of identical pieces into the production of individual ones that keep changing and evolving as the moulds undergo further degradation until they cease to function.“

The library is all white with accents of colours, taken straight from the COS fall 2018 collection that speak to the growth of gardens and plants into the moulds when they are eroding – moss green and yellow.