This week’s discovery may at first seem hard to categorise since it resembles oil, jewels or liquorice. It might then surprise the viewer that Marlène Huissoud herself refers to her work as a “celebration of waste materials”. Made of discarded glass and propolis, a resinous substance collected by honeybees for hive maintenance, these designs challenge the idea of waste and value. Every year, a beekeeper only removes less than 100g of propolis from the beehive frames in order to extract honey, which makes it a very precious material to work with. The glossy black colour stems from the type of plant that the bees harvest, in this case rubber trees. Marlène, coming from a family of beekeepers, then processes the propolis into bio resin and applies traditional techniques such as glass blowing and engraving.

We think Marlène herself deserves to be celebrated for such a beautiful design that is both traditional and innovative.