OK, so I know we’ve already posted work by Lex Pott in the past week (see his amazing Transience mirrors with David Derksen here). However, during my time at Dutch Design Week I also saw his True Colours shelving at a brilliant exhibition of work called Mass, which challenged the methods and materials typically found in mass-production. Like his Transience mirrors, Lex Pott’s True Colours shelving was the result of careful experimentation and research into the oxidiszation of metals; a quest to discover their true colours.

Pott explains “When an element like copper is found in nature it has a green colour, iron has an orange/brown colour when inside the earth . Oxidized metal surfaces create colours that provide information about a material, the pallete is a reaction with the base material.”

The colourful shelving is made with various different combinations of metals that have been carefully treated to different stages of oxidization; polished copper uprights contrast with bright green oxidized copper shelves.

Accompanying his shelving units are a series of works which detail the recipes for achieving different colours.

- A.Morris