Artist: Natalie Cole – exploring biomaterials

A selection of small items pictured from above. They are all different shapes and range in colour from white and cream to darker browns and greys.

Biomaterial Explorations by Natalie Cole (Photo: Natalie Cole)

Natalie Cole is an artist exploring circular regenerative design.

Natalie’s work is on show in Made in the Middle from January 2025 – April 2026.

Hugo Worthy describes Natalie’s exploration of biomaterials

Natalie Cole is a polymath who works across a range of creative disciplines, as a graphic designer, industrial designer and craft maker. The range of works she has produced for Made in the Middle explore an intersection between her craft work and her industrial design practice.   

Experimenting 

The works on display in the exhibition are both material experiments and highly polished (both literally and figuratively) design objects. The starting point for Cole’s work is the development of materials generated from waste products and the use of dehydration processes to ‘set’ these materials. Cole is part of a movement of makers exploring biomaterials, to develop more sustainable materials that are viable to replace plastics and other nonbiodegradable materials.   

Biomaterials 

The biomaterials that Cole is developing are derived predominantly from eggshells. These are ground into a fine powder and then mixed with a binder to create a smooth paste. The paste is poured into a mould, in this case the concave shape of the trinket boxes, and then sealed. It is then placed in a dehydrator, which extracts all moisture from the material, hardening it into solid, stable form. At least that is the theory, but for Cole there has been plenty of experimentation balancing the recipe for the material so that it is indeed a stable and permanent object after dehydration. 

Alongside these basic elements Cole experiments with additional elements to pigment the material. She has used muscle shells to create a blue tinge to the material and tea to create a richer brown for the objects. With all of these she is taking an experimental approach, documenting the various recipes and their outcomes, creating a range of stable materials that can be used to create new objects.  

Once the objects are created Cole looks at the finishes that can be applied to them. Some surfaces are highly polished and smooth, where some she leaves rough and uneven. Most of the experimentation has taken place at the scale of the jewellery boxes. The work is in part constrained by the size of the dehydrator that Cole has access to.  

The future of materials 

For this exhibition Cole has scaled up to creating furniture, building a stool top out of her materials. The objects work both as finished design objects in their own right, and as snapshots of the future, outlining shifts in how we will make and what we will make out of in the future.  

Hugo Worthy is Arts Curator at Leicester Gallery.

A woman stands in a studio surrounded by machines and materials. She has long hair and wears a black jumper.

Natalie Cole in the workshop (Photo: David P Rowan)

On the left hand side, there are cracked and powdered eggshells and mussel shells, next to which as small domes seemingly made of the powder. Each dome has a small circle cut out of its centre.

Images: Natalie Cole



Where Next?

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See all of the artists in the exhibition.

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Made in the Middle: Learning Resources

Resources and activities to support you visit.

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