Tel Aviv studio AndreyAndShay has created a collection of brushes in bold primary colours by melding sections of the bristles together to form handles.
Referencing the Monobloc Chair – the world's most ubiquitous polypropylene plastic chair – Shay Nifusi of AndreyAndShay rethought the way brushes are created, using a single material and a simple process.
Most contemporary brush manufacture is an automated version of traditional methods, which involved attaching hair to a wooden handle.
The hair is now artificial, the handle is plastic and the process involves machines instead of people, but the approach remains fundamentally the same.
"The main inefficiency in the current brush mass-making techniques is that it is the hand-making technique only faster," he told Dezeen. "The outcome of both methods is the same. I believe that we can look at the characteristics of the materials we work with to form something new and fresh.
"In the example of brushes, plastic bristles can act differently to natural bristles," Nifusi added. "They can be re-melted to the shape of a handle."
The Monobloc Brushes are made by locally heat-treating polypropylene bristles.
Using moulds that are partly heat-conducting and partly insulated, Nifusi creates integrated brush handles from the thermo-plastic bristles themselves by fusing a section of them together.
Different moulds create different forms that reference traditional straw brushes and the shapes created by twisting and bending sheaves of bristles.
"The shapes came first from playing with groups of bristles to see how they can be twisted and folded," said Nifusi. "Another thing that led me to choose some of the shapes were the archetypes of brushes made from natural straw and sometimes animal hair. They also used only one material."
Shay Nifusi established AndreyAndShay in Tel Aviv in 2011 with fellow Shenkar College graduate Andrey Grishko, who designed a machine for printing furniture and products by winding resin-soaked thread round a mould.
