Benedetta Pompili
Le Sere is a series of benches and side tables made from industrial byproducts gathered across Romania. Stained, broken, or uneven offcuts of marble, limestone, and andesite from Baia Mare are joined by steel rivets and topped with handmade ceramic tiles. The tiles are glazed using dust collected from the CupruMin copper mine near Abrud and from wire production at BergBanat in Timișoara.
The glaze—historically both a surface treatment and a form of containment—becomes a method of material disclosure. In the kiln, chemical residues react with heat to reveal the hidden compositions of the sites they came from. The iron can easily mute the copper. Growing amounts of zinc can show through a perfect gloss, or in dramatic crystals or even crawlings. Each tile becomes a kind of map—one that records the tensions between standardisation, opacity and contamination in the chemical industry.
Le Sere—meaning ‘the evenings’ in Italian—offers a gesture of care toward materials near the end of their lives. Through design, industrial residue is amplified rather than concealed, making visible the complex and essential interdependencies that define the chemical sector.
Credits
Partners: CMC Baia Mare SRL, CupruMin SA, Bergbanat SRL