Last week we had a plaster cast made on a 3D printer and now here's a light made out of a plaster cast.
Formed from hospital bandages used to make casts for broken limbs, the GIBS pendant light was developed by South Korean designer Juyoung Kim of Metafaux Design.
Kim produced the light in the same way that a plaster cast for a broken limb is made, soaking plaster-impregnated bandages in water and then wrapping them to form a shell.
However instead of wrapping the bandages around a limb, Kim used a glass belljar as his mould.
When the plaster hardens, Kim removes the thin structure from the mould and fits a lightbulb inside.
"This pendent lighting is made with plaster bandages, which we use in hospitals," says Kim. "As it's made by hand and finished differently, all the products have individually different light shading, and different details on the surfaces."
Kim adds: "I think when the material of the product is interpreted in different ways that wasn't mean to be, people will recover unexpected interest about the object, and it could be good starting point of a making conversation."
Kim completed an MA Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins, London, in 2009 before returning to Seoul to start Metafaux Design, which specialises in using unexpected materials to make products.
"The meaning META + FAUX has its own paradoxical idea," Kim explains. "As it's pronounced as [métə-foʊ], which subsequently reminds the sound of 'metaphor' in homonymous, the all work and projects indicate some implicit signifiers in order to convey new perspective and distinctive experience to people."
"It may be inferred as cultural crossover, or mixture of art and craft, and blowing the boundary between conventional tradition and modern design philosophy. Moreover, it doesn't just demolish the formal and trends, but recreate and reinvent them through eclectic, experimental methods."
Other lights made of unusual materials we've published include a desk light made of floppy rubber, a collection of pendant lights made of cable ties and lampshades made of seaweed.