Botanicals by Glithero
The distinctive plant silhouettes are achieved through a glazing technique called sgraffito (image: Choreo).
“They mustn’t be too pretty,” says Sarah van Gameren, one half of London-based studio Glithero, together with her partner Tim Simpson. “It’s usually the really hardy, clingy, down-trodden plants that end up looking great when they’re pressed.”
Van Gameren is referring to her and Simpson’s practice of collecting weeds local to their north London studio and pressing them in home-made herbaria. It started in 2009, with the idea of creating botanical cyanotypes – light-printing the contours of flattened plants onto the surface of ceramic tiles and vases using photosensitive chemicals. A resulting series of objects, the Blueware Collection, launched in 2010. But since then, says van Gameren, “the foraging has continued as something of a habit”.
In the last few years, Glithero has found fresh use for their botanical specimens. Partnering with a Dutch atelier that specialises in historic techniques of tile-cutting and glazing, the studio found that they could reproduce the effects of the Blueware Collection, while doing away with some of the volatility of using photosensitive chemicals. The Dutch craftspeople use a technique called sgraffito, whereby the contours of a specimen are incised into the slip, leaving behind luminous x-ray-like ghost-weeds on the fired tile. “The sgraffito is something the atelier used to do, historically,” says van Gameren. “We introduced the idea of them trying to use the technique again.”
“The foraging has continued as something of a habit.”
It took the best part of a year to set up production, but the result was Botanicals, a new collection of tiles which can be custom-made at much larger scale than the previous process allowed for. Murals and fittings using the tiles have already been installed in a London home, a Maldives resort and a Manhattan restaurant. For the latter, explains van Gameren, Glithero foraged for seaweed on the banks of the East River. An anchorage in a project’s specific locale is important to the studio. “We find it nice to keep it local, so we try to forage within a square-mile radius around us.” Similarly, the glaze shades – deep Delft blue, dark greens, a pale London-sky grey, to name a few – are drawn from existing recipes rooted in the Dutch ceramic tradition.
Decorative botanical imprints; historical crafting techniques – you’d be excused for thinking Botanicals somewhat nostalgic. Van Gameren rejects the term, however. “We’re not nostalgic,” she says. “We always tweak traditional techniques to fit the present. But we do find it reassuring to see that people have worked in similar ways before.” And it’s true. The effect of Botanicals is decorative, but never straightforwardly pretty. The tiles have a time- worn, organic quality. You imagine that you are yourself reaching for those sinuous weeds through the thicket of shrub in some London park; for seaweed through the murky waters of the East River.
Words Kristina Rapacki
This article was originally published in Disegno #28. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.
RELATED LINKS