Prague, March 7 (CTK) – A Czech group focusing on the production of concrete floors, kitchen units and staircases started making concrete earrings and their products were so successful that they had to close their online shop for a time because they were sold out, daily Pravo writes yesterday.
“We believed that we can prove that concrete belongs to the world of jewels same as surgical steel. It took us one year to find the right working procedure. We first of all had to find an appropriate composition of the concrete mixture for the production of earrings,” said designer Tibor Muzik, who studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology.
Muzik’s two partners in the Industry Jewellery project specialise in civil engineering.
At first, the concrete earrings cracked and crumpled. Only the fourth mixture they developed proved to be fitting its purpose, the paper writes.
Unlike in construction works, the concrete is not reinforced by any metal. The producers say the earrings are surprisingly light.
“Though everybody seems to think that a concrete earring is heavy because bridges and high-rise buildings are made of concrete, the opposite is true. We don’t add any stone or sand. Each earring weighs only two grammes,” Muzik said.
He said they expected concrete earrings to be for girls and women approximately under 30, but even ladies in their 80s buy them.
The online shop now offers ten types of concrete earrings and those with colouring and printing are the most popular. A pair costs about 600 to 700 crowns.
“We keep experimenting with colours and concrete printing. The Czech market is rather small and so we hope to also sell the earrings abroad,” Muzik told Pravo.
The earrings are cast in a workshop in the village of Moutnice, south Moravia.
kva/t/ms
