Yiyuan Bai

The materials are mainly made from Chinese herbal medicines.

Colors from herbal medicines themselves.

How to explore the possibilities in life and nature?

Yiyuan Bai as an interdisciplinary material maker, she focuses more on making sustainable materials and tends to develop materials into products, accessories or art installations according to their own characteristics.

In the last two years, her works have won awards in the International Environmental Protection Art Creation Contest and CADA Japan Concept Art Design Competition.

During the one year period of studying at the Royal College of Art, she mainly applied herbal medicine Pogostemon Cablin, Herba Eupatoriican to craft biomaterials, with the application of binding materials, using the liquid of beans and other materials to generate hard and soft bio-materials. Besides, she attempted to explore the changes of natural dyeing on herbal medicine through acid-base changes.

As her graduation is approaching, she is considering about if there are partners whose majors are related biomedical engineering, herbal medicine or product design that have interests in collaborating on projects.

剥落的痕迹瘙痒的痛楚无人可知残缺的外观胜似不完美却独一无二

The patterns of skin falling, the pain of itchy is known to nobody. The scattered skin is imperfect yet sole.

Herbal medicine with healing effects and recyclable biomaterials are research aspect that I have searched into, focusing on using two kinds of herbal medicines: Pogostemon Cablin, Herba Eupatorii and aquafaba (liquid from the beans) and other materials to make products, such as glove and package that I have crafted.

According to their characteristic of antifungal, these herbal medicines have the effect of curing Tinea manus, which is a dermatophyte infection of one or both hands.

手之疗配以草药敷之触可达平缓之道闻可达安神之道弃其与水混之可抑菌

It means the prescription of Tinea manus can be combined with the application of Pogostemon Cablin, Herba Eupatoriican which have the effects of sedation by touching, healing effects of easing anxiety by smelling, mixed with warm water can have anti-bacteria effects.

These are some samples made into glove and package.

The package materials is 100% made from bio-materials and ingredients from herbal medicines.

The handle part is designed to have enough length to open the package and take out the required objects as the users’ needs.

The demonstration gloves are made from two herbal ingredients.

It shows that the glove can be removed flexibly.

Each finger parts can be removed and installed at any time, which better enables users to wear corresponding gloves according to their own parts that has Tinea manus infection.