COOKIE-TIN
“Cookie-Tin” 2025
A button collection, found in an old cookie tin, is re-imagined, multiplied, and fragmented through the casting process.
Ceramics, oxide stains, found cookie-tin (sandblasted)
“an old button collection is re-imagined”
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Many of us have memories of family button collections that were kept in old tin containers. Saved for re-use, or a specific piece of clothing these smalll objects have memories attached to them, and these containers hold a treasure trove of stories.
They are not only the carriers of memories, and the importance of collecting; They are created as a record of past times, when we collected items to re-use, when we did not dispense of clothing, the term ‘fast-fashion’ did not exist, and we mended as a means to re-purpose.
“These relics I create are a quiet reminder that solutions may lie in how we lived in past times.”
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I use the casting process to re-create multiples, fracture memories, and fragment buttons
I make silicone molds of individual found-buttons and then press paper-clay into them as a means of re-creating and re-interpreting them. Silicone molds are not traditionally used with ceramics, but I am not wanting the perfect resolution that plaster molds gives. Molds are taken from actual buttons as well as ones I have 3D printed.
I use iron oxides to create stains that appear as though the buttons are old and rusted, an object from our past that has a relationship to sewing,slow garment-making, and mending.
The cookie-tin is one I found in a second-hand store containing its own collection of buttons and sewing paraphernalia. I re-honoured it through careful sand-blasting so it further relates as a home for the ‘rusted’ and fragmented buttons.
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