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algas marinhas Alba

ab 90 CHF

The seaweed designs are based on a personal discovery: the work of Américo Teles (1893–1983), a passionate phycologist, at the Museu Marítimo de Ílhavo in Portugal. Over several years Estelle Gassmann studied the world of seaweed and learned how to prepare them. This knowledge provided the material foundation for four collections centered around this natural cosmos.

Although visually diverse, the shared characteristic of these species is their fluidity which becomes the defining element of the designs. Gently in motion – as in their original habitat floating in water and barely tangible – the design evokes the sensation of drifting off to sleep, softly slipping into dreams and the comforting warmth of a restful night.

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Material and info
  • reactive inkjet print on 100% cotton fine satin 115 g/m2
  • 300 TC
  • 60° washable
  • calender finish
  • duvet covers with zip
  • pillowcases with envelope fastening
  • repeat size 234 x 221cm: Each duvet cover and pillowcase shows a different section of the all-over print.
  • made in northern Italy
  • other sizes are made to order
  • photographs: Giuseppe Micchiché, Katharina Lütscher
Delivery

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Project description

Estelle Gassmann’s interest in seaweed, in all of its forms and features, goes back to March 2017. While visiting the Museu Marítimo de Ilhavo in Portugal, she discovered the work of Américo Teles (1893-1983), the founder of the museum and a passionate algologist. There she bought the book Guia Prático de Preparação de Algas Marinas, a practical guide to preparing seaweed, published by his granddaughter Sónia Teles.

Estelle Gassmann decides to learn how to prepare algae and attends a workshop in March 2018 with Sónia Teles, an architect who lives in Porto and manages her grandfather’s estate.

In July 2018, Gassmann joined an excursion of biology students from the University and the ETH in Zurich to Roscoff in Brittany. She worked at the Station Biologique de Roscoff, selecting and collecting seaweed at low tide. She prepared and pressed some of her finds; others she left to dry in the sun. She took all of them home again on her return to Switzerland.

That winter she placed the specimens from Roscoff in an illuminated bowl of water, one after the other, where they rehydrated and regained all of their colours. She examined their shapes and features – and she discovered traces. Gently, she spread them out on dampened paper using a straw of piassava fibre, occasionally cutting off one or two overlapping twigs. For hours, days, evenings. The specimens stuck to the paper. Having covered them with a layer of gauze, placed between newspapers and books, she spent the next few months making scans and isolating the specimens with Photoshop.

Pictured against a white background, they were now ready to be used for her new collection of bed linens: algas marinhas. Gassmann enlarged them. Sometimes she found tiny snails sticking to them – and visible traces of salt. Some of the seaweed was already decaying when she collected them so that their colours ranged from old rose to pink. The fork weed shines light green. The palmaria palmata or red dulse lies aubergine-coloured on the table.

Four compositions result:

algas marinhas Tramonto
algas marinhas Corpo
algas marinhas Respiro
algas marinhas Alba

The linens were produced in the winter and spring of 2020. Gassmann selected cotton satin from a mill in northern Italy, on which she printed the designs using a reactive digital printing process, as she had done in the creations Field and Embedded Stories.

Estelle Gassmann studied textile design in Lucerne. She has been working as a designer and conducting her artistic research since 2006. Her works are surreal-poetic encounters. Textiles and ceramics are the preferred vehicles for her art. She is interested in motif and material, and also in the people committed to a work process that usually takes several years from initial spark to finished product. 

Work on the text: Sibylle Ciarloni

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