Jessie French

Jessie French’s practice is driven by our need for more conscious consumption and closed-loop systems of use. Her new body of work is a continuation of her material experimentation and development anchored in algae-based bioplastics with a further composite exploration using waste sawdust collected from a local furniture maker.

Why have you chosen to explore this new material within your algae bioplastics?

Trees, as well as all plants that perform photosynthesis, contain the DNA of an algae within the chloroplast in each of their cells, similar to mitochondria organelles within our cells that carry DNA seperate to our own and generate most of the chemical energy needed to power the cell’s biochemical reactions. 

Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis substantiated the theory of how chloroplasts and other cell organelles (like mitochondria) likely arose from a symbiosis between organisms which eventuated in them joined together. This process of evolutionary symbiosis is how the DNA of simple single-celled microalgae came to be part of every green terrestrial plant.

Making use of timber, as well as an interesting material exploration, is a nod to this cellular-level link between the two base ingredients which at first appear to be vastly different – algae and timber.


On top of a new kind of materials, what is gained is not wasting the remnants of this timber. Coming from the workshop of furniture maker Thomas Lentini, this material would otherwise go unused as a byproduct of their craft.

Why do you think we need to reflect and revaluate our approach to material in craft and design practice? 

Nothing lasts forever, and nothing should. We’ve created more than enough that will take up space on this planet and refuse to break down for an impolite amount of time.

Those at the design and craft end of things make conscious choices about materials and with this power comes a responsibility to make sure we aren’t endlessly extracting non-renewable resources and bringing more and more into circulation that won’t be reused at the end of its current form.

Where do you see this material going? How do you see it being used in the future? 

The waste involved in daily life weighs heavily on me. The sheer scale of material that cannot be easily recycled and the environmental cost of its production is outrageous. It’s uncomfortable to think about.  There’s certainly a lot of potential in this material. It’s overwhelming what it could be and the ways it could be integrated into everyday life to solve a huge issue we have with waste and the use of petrochemical plastics.

For those who are new to your practice, what exactly is bioplastic algae? and how is the material developed?

Bioplastic algae is a type of plastic - or rather a material that is malleable, shapeable or pliable. We usually associate the term plastic with synthetic material, however, bioplastics are those made from organic materials, and algae-based bioplastics are those made specifically with algae as the main ingredient.

I use both macroalgae and microalgae in my work. Macroalgae is the stuff we mostly think of as seaweed - you can see it with your naked eyes. Microalgae is tiny stuff. It is usually only visible as coloured water but under a microscope, these single-celled organisms are visible as whole parts.

The macroalgae I use is processed relatively simply through a process of washing it to remove salt and sand, then boiling it and concentrating the liquid over a series of similar processes. It is then dried and ends up as an odourless cream powder and that’s what I use as a base for the polymer. There is some more information about my research on this in Morocco here.

The microalgae is used whole. I can simply use the water from the bioreactors growing it in my studio or I can pour this over a mesh to drain the liquid and give it a rinse before adding it to a mix. I use this microalgae as a pigment but because it also has some microscopic mass to it, it adds structural integrity to the material as well. The dark colours that look black in my pieces are actually very dark green microalgae called Athrospira platensis.