The result of a collaboration between designers Nitzan Shalev and Michal Elzur, Ga produces simple yet beautiful handmade objects for the home using the humblest of materials—sand. 

Ga’s work is inspired by the fluid, asymmetrical forms of the natural world, and the ongoing evolution, however subtle and slow, of our environment. Each piece serves a functional purpose: it holds a candle, displays a collection of books, or provides a resting-place for a bar of soap. But Ga’s work is the very antithesis of sleek, mass-produced home accessories. They are idiosyncratic and textural, playful in form, and invite tactile exploration. 

“We are used to buying standardized identical products that are created in a mold,” the duo explains. “We buy them when they are in their best shape, we take them home and from that point they start to deteriorate.” Not in Mold, their first collection of objects for the home, is a response to this, rejecting the linear narrative of product degradation and depreciation in favor of an approach that seeks to embrace evidence of change and use over time. 

Ga is “more process than product”, according to Shalev, and Not in Mold confirms this. The items in the collection—“born from ever-changing sand molds that give each object a unique personality”—recall a time-lapse clip of a cliff-face slowly eroded over time, or a riverbed changing with the seasons. In these works, replicability takes a backseat to individuality. 

In a world preoccupied with resisting the marks of change—think of cosmetic products that promise to eliminate wrinkles or stretch marks; or expensive devices designed to last only a few years before they demand replacement—perhaps one of the most radical things we can do is embrace signs of wear and marks of age.