STORIES FROM THE ATELIER: IGOR KORKIN
- eliane de luca peres
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
igor reached out to me through my website a couple of years ago. he was working with a very special material called Fordite, also known as Detroit agate, Motor City agate, or paint rock. it is formed from finely layered paint deposits from automobile factories. most of it comes from Ford plants, which is how it got its name.
my father worked at Ford for quite some time so this resonated with me.
Fordite is not the easiest material to work with, but igor has truly managed to tame it, creating beautiful pieces that immediately capture one’s attention. i have shared his unique work on Instagram and today I share his story.
OST ARTEFACTS by Igor Korkin
I grew up in Ostankino, a Moscow neighborhood dedicated to USSR space explorers; many of its streets bear the names of cosmonauts and space scientists. Later, my path took me west — first to Dublin, and eventually to Berlin, where I now live near Ostbahnhof. The name OST ARTEFACTS itself is a hidden cipher of my own geography, a thread connecting the places that shaped my vision.
My background is in tech, but it was my passion for collecting wristwatches that led me to Fordite. One day I came across this material online and couldn't let it go. Fordite is an accidental byproduct of the Detroit automotive industry — during the car paint process, accidently, paint guns layer after layer left car enamel on racks and fixtures. These layers fused into a dense mass baked up to a hundred times. Layer over layer, hardened into a stone that geology could never make. The idea that paint leftovers of all things could produce something this strange and beautiful hit me immediately. I made the decision that I need to work somehow, to utilize this material and share it with people. That’s how the idea evolved and brought me here.
The brand's debut collection, SAi_TRi, works with three geometric forms — square, circle, triangle — each one treating the ring as a frame and the Fordite as the canvas inside it. Every piece is cut from a different section of the material, so no two rings hold the same pattern.
For me, the ring is not primarily an adornment. It's an object you choose because something in it caught you — because it says something about how you see the world without you having to explain it. It is an object that draws attention, sparks questions, and starts a conversation about who you are. Our rings are exactly conversation starters. People notice it. They ask about it.
