Emily Smith: On ‘Surplus’
Scrap metal from Emily’s bench.
At the start of last year, Emily embarked on a research project to run alongside her new collection, ‘Surplus’. This research project was quite a big undertaking, and has still got a way to go! Emily’s goal was to understand the life cycle of her materials better; she’s still working through ‘copper’, but decided she wanted to share some of the things she found out so far!
Did you know that records show that copper has been used for over 12,000 years? Its presence has been found all over the world, from the US to Namibia, from Australia to Kazakhstan! Romania to Chile!
As copper is an element, and we use it in its natural form, it’s quite straight forward to recycle! It is the third most recycled metal after iron and aluminium, in terms of volume. Did you know that around 80% of all copper that's ever been mined is still being used at present? Whether in buildings, machines or recycled into something new! A crazy thought! It is also believed that more than 95% of all copper ever mined and smelted has been extracted since 1900. This would mean that humans have been using copper for over 10,000 years, but only around 5% of that copper came from those first 9,900 years!
It has a number of properties and has had a great many uses over the years - from once being currency in Roman times, to Indian vessels for storing water. It's used in building materials, wood preservatives, antimicrobial products in health settings, renewable energy and it is so beautifully used in sculpture and jewellery too!
You might know it as the metal that makes you go green; it's not ideal to have against your skin, but using it as a decorative feature or as a brooch (something that only makes contact with clothes), it has so much potential!
If you’d like to see the collection that coincides with this project, be sure to stop by The Colour Factory to see her copper brooches - made with the aforementioned workshop scraps. If you’d like to read more about the collection, follow this link to find out more!
Work in progress from Emily’s workshop.