Jesmonite & potassium permanganate
Material innovation is one of the most valuable parts of product design. Innovations in form and functionality are perhaps slower to discover and often struggle to be really relevant, but with a new material it is different. A material is like a tool that you can use to create further, it is an open-ended potential. This one came out of fairly random experimentation.
Sum of two things
The ingredients here are Jesmonite™ – an amazing casting material that is around since the 80s – and potassium permanganate. For a long time I had the permanganate in mind as a strong coloring agent apart from its main role as disinfectant. Even though the water solution of permanganate crystals creates a deep purple colored liquid it will dye porous or fibrous materials in shades of brown. When you mix the creamy white Jesmonite with the purple crystals they tend to disperse randomly and evenly and upon curing of the water-based mixture create very biological looking brown spots throughout the material. There seems to be no significant change to the properties of the cured material.
3D printed mold.
Plant pots …
Table tops …
Interior tiles …
Accessories …
Casting anything
The key property of Jesmonite is that it can be cast very easily into many materials and it does not change volume upon curing unlike concrete for example. This property is still there after adding the permanganate allowing for endless shape variations. The next step from this would be to explore forms, surface textures and color combinations. Jesmonite accepts pigments very well and it is predictable that each pigment will respond differently to the permanganate crystals. Depending on the quality of the mold Jesmonite can replicate any texture up to a smooth mirror-like finish which should look great with this spotted effect.
Any shape of mold.
Table top accessories …
Heavy base of an object …
Vases …
Side tables …
Visions
Typologies
Materials & colors