 Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Nature by Design, Cochiniel, Virginia San Fritello. San Fritello, a middle-aged white woman with red hair and dark glasses, sits in her studio looking at the camera. On the table in front of her are 3D printed ceramic vessels with loopy textures on the surface. The loopy textures are staggered like pine cones. Some are made of white porcelain, others are shiny black, and some are a warm, orangey brown with shiny speckles. My name is Virginia San Fritello. I'm a partner in the 3D printing Make Tank Emerging Objects, and we printed several vessels for the exhibit using Cochiniel. A two-piece 3D printed vessel is shown. The top piece is made of pink resin in a dome-like shape with a narrow mouth. The surface has a satin finish and looks like circle mesh or cells. The bottom is made of orangey brown clay. Next, a two-piece 3D printed vessel is shown. The top piece has similar loopy texture. The bottom piece is pink and has embossed leaf-like patterns. Two people, Virginia San Fritello and Ronald Rayell, stand in front of their 3D printed cabin in their backyard. The facade is made of 3D printed tiles and small vessels that contain plants. At Emerging Objects, we developed different materials for 3D printing, and we historically have worked with geological materials like clay, cement, and agricultural materials such as sawdust and chardonnay grape skins. We see a shot of a 3D printed Mycaceous clay to Jean. Like the previous vessel, this one has loopy texture. Next, we see a 3D printed sawdust screen. The object surface has a gritty texture and is filled with large convex oblong coals. An image of the side of the aforementioned 3D printed cabin focusing on the 3D printed vessels is shown. We try to bring materiality to the forefront of the design of our objects, and we want to tell a story about the provenance of that material, so where it comes from and how it gives an object thick meaning for the 21st century. So we're bringing together very traditional materials, especially in the case of cochineal materials that have been around for a very long time, but we're taking that to the other end of the technological spectrum by using it through the lens of 3D printing and additive manufacturing. The nozzle of the 3D printed machine is shown depositing clay layer by layer on a wooden board. We see a time-lapse of this process as the clay vessel grows taller and taller. Thinking about how to 3D print with cochineal is a completely new experiment and process for us. Someone scoops dried cochineal bugs out of a container onto a table. The bugs are placed in a mortar and ground into a dark red powder with a pestle. The powder is dumped onto a table to show off its vibrant red color. We started by using the powdered cochineal, so the color had already been extracted from the insect. We first experimented by actually mixing it with a clay body, and we put it in an air-dry clay body because we knew if we used a clay body that would be fired of course it would burn out. And we made some loopy vessels, kind of like the ones you see here with the cochineal and the air-dry clay, which were interesting, but we had a hard time controlling the color of the cochineal. It always turned to a very, very dark purple, and I think we were looking for something much more vibrant and red as part of the outcome. A shiny red 3D printed clay vessel with a regular loopy textures is shown. There are many red spotters on the table around the vessel and discarded pieces of clay. A pinkish-gray 3D printed clay vessel with oozing loops is shown next. Next, a pink-dyed hand holds a white and pink 3D printed cup. The cup is unglazed and is only colored on the raised ends of the loops. Three pink loopy 3D printed cups with oozing forms sit on a table. In subsequent experiments, we 3D printed with nylon on top of a mycaceous clay bottom, and we did that because the mycaceous clay is another traditional material that came from the same geological region as the insect itself. A video of someone placing the two-part 3D printed vessels together is shown. We also experimented with putting the cochineal powder, or extract, in a resin bath. A gloved hand pours clear resin into a shallow tank. The arm at the top of the machine is lowered into the tank. And in the particular printer that we were using, you can use a clear resin or white resin and we were able to mix the cochineal extract with it in order to get varying degrees of pink to red. And this liquid vat of red resin would solidify through the use of light. So there are lasers in the printer that solidify the resins. A close-up shot of the resin filling the tank is shown. A precise UV light moves in a prescribed pattern to cure the resin. The layer-by-layer solidification process creates forms that adhere to the arm lowered into the tank. So for me that was exciting because it wasn't a process of dying or using the cochineal at the end, but it was really integral and those pieces are solid in red all the way through because the cochineal was used throughout the printing process itself. A photograph of all four of the 3D printed vessels is shown. On the left is the two-piece tijine-shaped vessel. The base is mikescious clay and the top is pink resin. To the right, on a small pedestal, is another two-part vessel. The top piece is semi-o-pink dark red and is basket-like and splays outward. The bottom piece is solid hot pink, shaped like a cauldron. Below it is a red vase or decanter-shaped piece with a damask-inspired pattern. The surface has an interlay structure that is not entirely solid. The pattern appears where the cells are filled in. To the left of it is another two-piece 3D printed vessel. The top piece has loopy texture. The bottom piece is pink and has an embossed leaf-like pattern. The forms of the vessels in the exhibit are inspired by traditional cochineal extraction processes. So we saw some drawings or plates that illustrated the process of harvesting the cochineal, collecting the insects and baskets, and then those baskets being deposited into a pot that had boiling water as a way of getting the color out of the insect. A historical drawing is shown of a man dressed in a blue striped white tunic and cochineal-dyed pants scraping the cochineal beetles from the Nopal cactus using a deer tail. An illustration depicts the next step in the cochineal harvesting process. There's a bag and two woven baskets. One basket is on the ground, the other is placed in a cauldron over the fire. Below the basket is a Kamala smooth flat griddle over a fire. Below the Kamala are sieves. The next illustration depicts a man dumping the cochineal out of the woven basket into the cauldron over the fire. A curator places a Virginia's two-piece vessel together on a table. We now see the similarity between the illustrated cauldron and basket and the 3D printed pieces. And so the vessels that we made are inspired by the basket and the most likely ceramic or metal pot that held the boiling water. A photo of the red vase with a dam is inspired pattern is shown. Some of the motifs on the basket-like surfaces actually are inspired by damisk wallpaper. We found this very beautiful sample of a piece of tapestry from Italy that was made or colored using cochineal. An image of deep purple Italian silk damisk is shown. We were interested in not only the historic traditions that you might find in the production of cochineal in Central and South America, but also how it migrated to Europe and how the dye was used completely differently there. A map of global cochineal trade is shown next. Cochineal follows old world trade routes to major global ports. One of the most exciting outcomes of working with the cochineal in 3D printing for me was realizing that I didn't only have to rely on the material itself in the printer, but I could start to add other materials to that to form new 3D printed composites. And I think that's opened the door to think about how we could add other natural materials that might traditionally be used as dyes into the 3D printing process. And I expect there will probably be many more material experiments that come out of this.