The best-looking coffee grounds products are lamps

Coffee has gradually become a lifestyle for modern people, but at least 8 million tons of coffee grounds are produced every year around the world. What else can we do with them besides keeping them at home to remove odors?

Mimicking the texture of marble, China-based designer Zhekai Zhang recently developed a method for dyeing porcelain using old coffee grounds, and applied the technique to a series of lamps called Coffee.

This method, inspired by ancient Chinese pit digging techniques, creates an "imperfect" random texture, meaning every Coffire chandelier is different.

The Coffire project originated from a business committee promoting coffee drinks. After learning how much coffee waste is generated each year, Zhekai Zhang began to think about how to reuse coffee, leading Chinese designers to study ceramic firing technology.

" At least 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide each year, producing at least 8 million tons of coffee grounds, most of which are discarded and thrown into landfills or incinerated with other waste. Disposing of coffee grounds as waste not only consumes a lot of energy, but also harms the environment. "

Natural coffee grounds are safer than the toxic metals used to colour ceramics in ancient fire pit firing, and Zhekai Zhang, who graduated from the Royal College of Art last year , used a gas kiln rather than a traditional sand pit in order to mass produce the lamps while avoiding the high waste rates associated with sand pit firing , the oldest known method of firing pottery.

During the low-temperature firing process at 700-1000℃, the coffee grounds on the surface release biodiesel and sugar, which interact with each other to reveal a pink random texture, as beautiful as marble.

Random surface textures and patterns are the result of the interaction of variables such as temperature, humidity and density of coffee grounds. Since there are no trace elements in the gas kiln, the color saturation of the finished product will also be higher.

"Thanks to an innovative coloring technique, the Coffire lamp has a pink marble surface texture, an effect that cannot be achieved with other glazes," said Zhekai Zhang. "The texture and color produced by this firing technique are different, making each lamp unique."

Zhekai Zhang and other RCA alumni have set up a studio called Kae in the hope of commercialising the idea.

Another designer experimenting with waste materials as ceramic glazes is Agne Kucerenkaite, whose Ignorance is a Bliss project that repurposes industrial metal waste, turning it into a powdered dye for colourful porcelain tableware and tiles.

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