When Philipp Spillmann roans the forests looking for mushrooms, he often finds unexpected objects, remains of human activity. The forest leaves its mark on the surfaces over time. He doesn’t know how these objects ended up there. They are carriers of their own stories. Coffee pots, plastic parts, tools, golf balls, thermos bottles, ski sticks, lighters, they become part of a growing collection. Spillmann uses his own imagination and crafts these objects into brooches.
Mushrooms are only the visible fruit bodies of fungi. Most of the fungal organism lives in the soil interwoven with tree roots as a vast network of mycelium, which connects individual plants together to transfer information and nutrition. Other fungi are parasites of living organisms or decomposers of dead or organic matter. Forests are vulnerable and threatened. Without fungi no forest!
Spillmann was born and raised in Switzerland where he completed a classical goldsmith apprenticeship. He moved to Norway in 2001 and gradually began exploring alternative materials found in garbage dumps, flea markets or discarded in nature; materials that suggest visualizations of perceptions and associations. Since becoming a member of the Norwegian Association of Arts and Crafts in 2011, he has exhibited widely, and his work is represented in several private and public collections. In 2026, the Museum of Applied Arts of Cologne and the Danner Foundation for Die New Sammlung acquired works from this new ‘Mushroom’ collection by Philipp Spillmann.
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