Over the past six months, Studio resident Tom Metcalfe has been developing his understanding of composite materials from an art and design perspective, through a micro-residency supported by the Bristol-based National Composites Centre. In a Lunchtime Talk, he presented the various iterations of a composites-based hourglass vase and explained the process. Here are five key points I took away:

- Broadly speaking, composite materials are made of two or more different materials, to make them more robust. An early example is mud and straw to make bricks, plywood is a common composite material, and a more complex example would be carbon fibre. These materials are used in all manner of industries - to make lightweight but strong aeronautical or maritime vehicles, in the production of Kevlar vests, to develop safe sporting equipment such as skis and skates, and to generate energy amongst many other applications. 

- In being selected for the micro-residency, Tom was granted access to the manufacturing plant that typically has exclusive use by skilled professionals, due to the complex processes required. Tom was keen to explore the craftsmanship that goes into that process and find ways to make composites more accessible to artists and designers. Currently, materials are often expensive, difficult to mass-produce and recycle, and the use of the 'making' spaces filled with necessary machinery implicate health and safety issues. Tom hoped to test these barriers to determine an entry-level to composite craft. 

- Tom created his vases in an approach he likened to traditional tailoring. His first successful lay-up involved coating an existing vase with release film, wrapping it in glass cloth with a multi-directional stretch as opposed to the one-directional stretch of carbon fibre, using a spray mount to set and impregnating with resin. Once dried, Tom had achieved a hardy and interesting half vase shell with a texture on the outside and a smooth and glossy resin-soaked underside. 

- In the next iteration of the vase, to achieve the neat wrapping of the material, Tom will have to introduce robotic intervention to map and cut a petal shape that will adjoin when sculpted to the shape of the vase. 

- A useful method for predicting the use of composites is to compare to properties in the natural world, such as skin. If you can understand the way skin stretches across the contours of the body and its malleability, you come some way to understanding the benefit of composites and their unique features.