Erosion, Library of 300
2017
Confluence • 20+, Chicago Design Museum, U.S.A
Porcelain and glaze
Unique installation
“The plaster moulds we’ve collected have become receptacles recording time, place and growth as nature erodes and reshapes them.”
Erosion is a project that chronicles the permeation of water and nature into discarded plaster moulds that Julie & Jesse collected over the course of several months from teaware factories in Jingdezhen.
After accumulating moulds in numbers that would allow them to mass-produce, the duo setup a factory to manufacture an installation of a thousand unique porcelain vessels casting porcelain slip to record direct impressions of the traces left by erosion.
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 erosion of the mould. The vessels are a manifestation of the invisible. They are a display of a natural occurence and deliver an aesthetic breaking away from the archetypes of Jingdezhen with their idealised visions of nature.
As well as rethinking the process of design, Erosion explores the reversing of the concept of serial production.
Julie & Jesse turn imperfections into beauty and mass-manufacturing of the same pieces into mass-production of individuals that keep changing and evolving as the moulds undergo further degradation until they cease to function.
Words: Julie Progin
Photography: Julie Progin
