Go Home

“ex officine della Torneria” in Tortona district, from Designer Hsiao-Ying Lin “Go Home”  was showed in “Milano Design Week 2017” at the exhibition [róng].

Over the last 5 years, 50 designers have created 5 Chinese crafts that have combined with 500 materials such as bamboo, silk, mud, copper, paper to create 70 design pieces.

One of the most impressionable mediums (for a rice lover like me) was the use of the rice byproduct: rice hull. I am familiar seeing the myriad of ways rice byproducts have been used and am aware of some of the history. We know that in many civilizations rice has an intrinsic symbology that is combined with “life-birth-abundance-fertility.”  So, the thing that caught my fascination the most in this exhibit was the association of rice with its opposed: death.

“Go Home”
Designer: Hsiao-Ying Lin
Materials: carbonized rice, glutinous rice glue.

“Go Home” is a carbonized rice hull container filled with ashes and plants. As the designer states: “it is the most natural, non-toxic, recyclable and natural burial that turns the cemetery into a forest garden called ‘ash burials’.” The carbonized rice hull container can restore the vitality of the land after integration with the soil.

The rice husks is rich in SiO2 monomer and alkaline carbonized husk after charring at temperatures above 800 degrees fahrenheit. The rice hush container supplies soil nutrients and corrects acidification of the soil as well as replenishing nutrients to soil and sustainable vitality.

The designer to presented the container with a familiar biblical quote from Genesis: "Ashes to ashes dust to dust”  So, we can add “rice gifts life to earth…returns to the earth”.