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Spacial Magazine

The Unexpected Symboll-ism of Fungi

By: Alexandra Antih Střelcová Photo: JAFR
#Lasvit World of Design
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A lock­down idea to exper­i­ment with myceli­um has led the Czech design stu­dio LLEV to dis­cov­er a some­what unlike­ly rela­tion­ship between glass and fun­gi. This cre­ative spark has now result­ed in a new glass­ware col­lec­tion, Sym­boll. Inspired by the unique prop­er­ties of myceli­um, Sym­boll draws from its nat­ur­al biodegrad­abil­i­ty while propos­ing a rev­o­lu­tion­ary method of glass mould pro­duc­tion. What else can sprout up from the world beneath our feet?

It took exact­ly four min­utes and thir­ty-three sec­onds for John Cage – the Amer­i­can com­pos­er and ama­teur mycol­o­gist – to rev­o­lu­tionise the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of music and noise. “Hear­ing” his 1952 piece, the apt­ly named 4’33, that requires per­form­ers not to play their instru­ments, the amazed audi­ences realised there is no such thing as silence. A whole new world opens up when lis­ten­ing to sounds we nev­er thought were part of the story.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The mould is made of myceli­um and beech saw­dust, a by-prod­uct of glass mould pro­duc­tion. As myceli­um grows, it forms a thick­er leather-like skin on the sur­face, trans­form­ing wood waste into a thriv­ing ecosys­tem that can once again be put to use. The brown spots indi­cate where the fruit­ing bod­ies will soon grow, although they aren’t used in the final mould.

Cage’s pas­sion for neglect­ed sounds can very well illus­trate humans’ per­cep­tion of fun­gi. Con­sid­ered part of the plan­tae king­dom until a few decades ago, the con­tri­bu­tion of fun­gi to the ecosys­tems of this plan­et long went unno­ticed. But if humans weren’t able to sur­vive with­out oxy­gen pro­duced by plants, plants wouldn’t be able to sur­vive with­out myceli­um, the extent and role of which is some­times referred to as the wood wide web. Thanks to myceli­um – the sub­ter­ranean net­work of fun­gi branch­es – plants can com­mu­ni­cate, dis­trib­ute nutri­ents or send each oth­er sig­nals when in danger.

Much of human life as we know it has been impact­ed by fun­gi. They are lit­er­al­ly every­where: from alco­hol over sour dough to a mould pro­duc­ing a bac­te­ria-killing sub­stance known as peni­cillin. Fun­gi can break down rock, crude oil, plas­tics or TNT. They can push their way through asphalt, although they them­selves weigh no more than a few grams. Their pop­u­la­tions thrive in places no sane human would ever ven­ture into, for instance the imme­di­ate sur­round­ings of the Cher­nobyl nuclear pow­er plant.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
Quite telling­ly, the col­lec­tion is named Sym­boll, encour­ag­ing the audi­ence to dis­cov­er the glass­ware pro­duc­tion process in pre­vi­ous­ly unthink­able ways. This par­tic­u­lar one uses moulds that were made of myceli­um and wood waste, striv­ing to rep­re­sent a sym­bol of change.

A recent surge in fun­gi pop­u­lar­i­ty spear­head­ed by the likes of Mer­lin Shel­drake or Paul Stamets has sparked a grow­ing inter­est in the top­ic, espe­cial­ly with design­ers, artists, and entre­pre­neurs. Brands like Mer­cedes, Her­mès or Adi­das have incor­po­rat­ed myceli­um in their prod­ucts. Its poten­tial in rock­et sci­ence is stud­ied by NASA. Inno­v­a­tive approach­es to myceli­um as a mate­r­i­al have been lit­er­al­ly spring­ing up like mush­rooms: sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing, eth­i­cal leather, build­ing mate­r­i­al, and even coffins. All effort­less­ly com­ply with the cur­rent stan­dards for the nat­ur­al, cir­cu­lar, or biodegradable.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The unique­ness of Sym­boll lies in its dis­tinc­tive shape formed by myceli­um growth process­es. Fur­ther­more, it marks the first time this mate­r­i­al was used in glass mould production.

Czechs are often labelled as a nation of avid wild mush­room pick­ers, yet work­ing with myceli­um hasn’t quite tak­en off in the local design com­mu­ni­ty so far. But this year, he afore­men­tioned exper­i­men­ta­tion with the mate­r­i­al has result­ed in a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Lasvit and LLEV design stu­dio who are no new­bies in the field. Togeth­er, they launched Sym­boll, a glass­ware col­lec­tion shaped by nat­ur­al process­es char­ac­ter­is­tic of myceli­um growth. Not only is this the first time the mate­r­i­al is used in craft­ing moulds for glass­mak­ing, it aspires to rev­o­lu­tionise glass pro­duc­tion with a method using beech saw­dust as the basis for grow­ing mycelium.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
Plants and fun­gi col­lab­o­rate through a sub­ter­ranean net­work some­times nick­named the wood wide web. This mutu­al rela­tion­ship con­tin­ues even as the mycelial fil­a­ments, hyphae, grad­u­al­ly absorb the dead plant leaf struc­ture, until even­tu­al­ly break­ing it down.

“Our fam­i­ly con­ver­sa­tions inspired us to start exper­i­ment­ing with myceli­um as a mate­r­i­al for use it in design. As a result of these dis­cus­sions, we ordered a bag of spores from the Nether­lands at the end of 2019,” says Eva Mochalová who set up LLEV design stu­dio togeth­er with her part­ner Mar­cel in 2004. Based in a remote vil­lage near Turnov in north­ern Bohemia, they spent the first months of Covid lock­downs test­ing and pro­cess­ing the mate­r­i­al, and then pre­sent­ed a col­lec­tion of can­dle­sticks and tables at Design­blok 2020. “But we didn’t want to stop at mak­ing fur­ni­ture, bowls or pots, a lot of col­leagues abroad are doing that. We asked our­selves: How can we take this pas­sion to anoth­er level?”

One par­tic­u­lar detail imme­di­ate­ly caught their atten­tion: among oth­er qual­i­ties, myceli­um is fire-retar­dant. As Head of Stu­dio of Glass at the Fac­ul­ty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem, Mar­cel has seen glass being blown into all sorts of mate­ri­als includ­ing a pump­kin or card­board. “We thought, why couldn’t we try blow­ing glass into moulds made of myceli­um? After all, unlike oth­er types of moulds, they can be tak­en to the woods or com­post,” adds Eva.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The process of blow­ing glass into moulds made from beech saw­dust impreg­nat­ed with myceli­um remains large­ly exper­i­men­tal. But the mate­r­i­al is already being hailed for its fire-retar­dant prop­er­ties thanks to which the mould can with­stand the heat. And as a plus, it is ful­ly biodegradable.

In order to achieve this, LLEV teamed up with Brno-based start-up Myk­ilio who grew the forms using Gan­o­der­ma lucidum, a mush­room also used for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es. “Mush­rooms have been cul­ti­vat­ed arti­fi­cial­ly for food and gas­tron­o­my for at least fifty years,” says Matěj Róth who co-found­ed Myk­ilio with Jakub Seifert in 2019. “We use grain inocu­lum com­bined with lig­no-celu­lous wastes like saw­dust, straw, or cof­fee grounds. All the input mate­ri­als imprint their mechan­i­cal prop­er­ties into the final prod­uct and the mush­room basi­cal­ly acts as a glue that binds all the dif­fer­ent parts togeth­er,” he explains the back­ground of the process.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
A ful­ly colonised sub­strate by Gan­o­der­ma lucidum with a young fruit­ing body on the top. Some­times called reishi, the mush­room is also used in tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese and Japan­ese med­i­cine to fight fatigue, stim­u­late the immune sys­tem, or to treat res­pi­ra­to­ry tract infections.

After the fun­gus final­ly rips through the sub­strate, it is ground into a pow­der and poured into neg­a­tive moulds. It takes three to sev­en days before the result­ing object can be tak­en out and dried at about 80 degrees Cel­sius to kill the remain­ing fun­gus in order to pre­vent its fur­ther growth. Glass is then blown into the moulds, with myceli­um leav­ing a unique imprint on each piece in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent way.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The col­lec­tion Sym­boll by LLEV design stu­dio is a result of coop­er­a­tion between humans and nature, with the lat­ter being the cre­ator itself. Mycelium’s nat­ur­al growth always leaves a unique imprint on the sur­face of each product.

“We are not the design­ers of this set, rather we let nature cre­ate. We’ve just nudged it and giv­en it some direc­tion, but we’re let­ting it work on its own. With glass — the cre­ation of which is also a nat­ur­al process — the two things come togeth­er to pro­duce this unique shape,” says Eva whose pas­sion for myceli­um can be an inspi­ra­tion to oth­ers on their jour­ney of dis­cov­er­ing what’s under­neath our feet. “If we under­stand fun­gi, lis­ten to and coop­er­ate with them, and live togeth­er in sym­bio­sis, every­one will benefit.”

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Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The mould is made of mycelium and beech sawdust, a by-product of glass mould production. As mycelium grows, it forms a thicker leather-like skin on the surface, transforming wood waste into a thriving ecosystem that can once again be put to use. The brown spots indicate where the fruiting bodies will soon grow, although they aren’t used in the final mould.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
Quite tellingly, the collection is named Symboll, encouraging the audience to discover the glassware production process in previously unthinkable ways. This particular one uses moulds that were made of mycelium and wood waste, striving to represent a symbol of change.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The uniqueness of Symboll lies in its distinctive shape formed by mycelium growth processes. Furthermore, it marks the first time this material was used in glass mould production.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
Plants and fungi collaborate through a subterranean network sometimes nicknamed the wood wide web. This mutual relationship continues even as the mycelial filaments, hyphae, gradually absorb the dead plant leaf structure, until eventually breaking it down.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The process of blowing glass into moulds made from beech sawdust impregnated with mycelium remains largely experimental. But the material is already being hailed for its fire-retardant properties thanks to which the mould can withstand the heat. And as a plus, it is fully biodegradable.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
A fully colonised substrate by Ganoderma lucidum with a young fruiting body on the top. Sometimes called reishi, the mushroom is also used in traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine to fight fatigue, stimulate the immune system, or to treat respiratory tract infections.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: The unexpected Symboll-ism of fungi
The collection Symboll by LLEV design studio is a result of cooperation between humans and nature, with the latter being the creator itself. Mycelium’s natural growth always leaves a unique imprint on the surface of each product.

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Symboll by LLEV

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