ManoConcept

It starts with a culture that grows. In her studio in Dunaharaszti, Hungary, Marietta Mészáros, known as Manó, ferments kombucha until it yields a SCOBY, the membrane she then dries and works as a material in its own right. A former sous chef in two respected Bristol restaurants in the UK, where she cooked vegetarian and vegan food and already brewed her own kombucha, she kept a taste for slow, living processes. Every piece begins with reclaimed materials: upcycled wine bottle glass, a little brass, and this kombucha biomaterial that becomes a backdrop for the dried flowers or dandelion seeds set beneath the glass, as if suspended. The pendants hang from strands of Czech glass beads, strung into 45 cm necklaces that catch the light with every movement: black and faceted on some pieces, warm cappuccino-froth tones on others. Nothing repeats: the natural variations in the SCOBY, the glass and the flowers mean no two pieces are ever alike. Marietta works by hand, made to order, giving each stage the time it needs, sometimes up to a month. She calls her work Contemporary BioArt, a way of turning what we discard into something we keep.