Snail Excrement Tiles

Tiles with a malleable, rough, textured surface made from dyed snail excrements. Snails are fed a strict regime of colored cellulose paper, resulting in irregular textures and mottled color. The manufacturer has created a homemade laboratory that is comprised of a series of compartments where the snails have access to sheets of colored paper, which has similar cellular structure to the plant matter they typically eat, but because they cannot assimilate the paper’s pigments, their bodies reject the color of the ingested paper creating colored excrements. Excrement is gathered and fed into a portable machine that grinds the material, then mixes it with linseed oil and dammar gum. The mixture is then applied to sack cloth for stability. An additional 6 weeks of drying time is required for completion. Turnout rate is slow; one meter (39 in) of thread will take an hour and contains six grams (0.2 oz) of excrement that is ground before processing. It takes approximately nine snails five days to produce six grams (0.2 oz). The color of the excrement depends on the color of the digested paper. Customization is available for color, size of tile and in either pressed or woven tiles. Applications are for flooring.