This Designer Uses Bacteria From Her Own Body To Create Jewellery

The majority of people are generally feel uneasy whenever they read or hear the word bacteria, yet a bio designer has overcome this aversion and created jewellery from them. Ms Chloe Fitzpatrick is a jewellery designer and BioDesigner, who collaborates with microorganisms in her work.  

According to her website, for this project she worked with scientists from Dundee University and the James Hutton Institute, to help grow colour from bacteria found in plants and her body.  She also worked towards preserving these colours and colonies in UV resin and dying thread with these pigments. 

Ms Chloe swabbed parts of her body and plants on LBS nutrient agar, grew a range of bacterial colonies, then selected the coloured colonies she liked and 'isolated' them on a new agar plate, to multiply the colour fast, as per her website.

"Once the coloured colonies grew, UV resin was poured onto the plates, mixed and set into a rubber mold then sealed with gloss," the institute added. Different regions of her body have different coloured bacteria.

According to the information provided by Dundee University, Ms Chloe's goal for this project is to help people acknowledge the hidden world of bacteria that surrounds us day-to-day and to reconnect with a part of nature that is not commonly thought of. She believes bacteria have great potential to become an environmentally friendly alternative to heavy chemical-based dyes and pigments. This is something she is excited about exploring in future projects.

Ms. Chloe Fitzpatrick attempted to create methods for keeping bacteria in their original form while modifying the shape to convey a narrative. Chloe used the 3D printing program Z-Brush to first digitally create a face, a plant leaf, and various shapes to compare human and plant bacteria, as per her website.