LONDON––Working with glazes can be dribbly, goopy and straight-up noxious. Luckily and interestingly, Central Saint Martins masters graduate Sinae Kim has developed an app for the noxious part––a topical application, that is, of urine. We give you: Urine Ware.
The collection features a series of ceramic vessels which draw structure from the hollow shape of the human bladder as well as laboratory glassware. Kim then glazed the forms with human urine, Dezeen reports.
Kim collected and recorded 280 litres of human urine from five people over a period of five months. This was then distilled through evaporation, which resulted in a residual paste in a dark orange-brown colour.
Through her collection, the Material Futures graduate actively pits the stigma of human waste against the ceramics field’s well-established employment of potentially toxic glaze by demonstrating one way to improve the environmental impact of ceramics practice.
Kim believes that urine can be used as a sustainable alternative to glaze in the ceramics industry, which normally uses metal oxide glazes that have the potential to cause metal poisoning.
Through her research Kim explains to Dezeen she learned urine has been widely used throughout history for myriad purposes like planting, cleansing, therapeutic medicine, whitening teeth and tanning leather, so her methodology isn’t entirely novel.
Check out NCECA’s podcast on the topic of ceramic sustainability.
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