Xavier Montoy:

Paris - Sternocera aequisignata

Xavier Montoy: 00:19

So I have a big plank of beetle fragments and then I work with it. The crazy thing with those beetles is that they are iridescent. It’s a metallic color between blue and green, or it’s also gold or deep blue. Basically, when I saw this material, I was like, okay, it’s good to use biology to develop projects and make science, but my feeling was it was most important to reveal the beauty of nature, to make people understand that it’s such an amazing thing that when people will notice it, I hope they will be more conscious of the beauty of nature and the way that we have to take care of it.

Sarah Monk: 01:06

Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of Materially Speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. Today, Mike Axon and I are in the 11th Arrondissement Of Paris meeting Xavier Montoy, whose passion for highlighting the importance of insects in the ecosystem has led him to create jewelry with the Sternocera beetle. It’s a cool March morning and the colors seem very Parisian. A bluish gray veil is in the air as we walk past handsome Norman churches through wide boulevards towards Xavier’s workshop.

Sarah Monk: 01:37

Bicycles skim by. Pedestrians pull their coat collars up as they march over the zebra crossings. The cafes are just waking up as we descend for our morning hit in one of the nouvelle vague of coffee houses. Xavier meets us at the large industrial gates of the city De Taiendiere in Rue Taiendiere. Here around 20 artists and artisans have workspaces thanks to an initiative of the Mayor of the 11th who is keen to support the preservation of historic craft activities in the arrondissement.

Sarah Monk: 02:09

Upstairs, in his shared neat workspace, we see a magical display box of beetles and butterflies, a case of jewellery tools and some three d printing equipment. Above on a shelf are some sheets of the precious metal he has created from beetles. We ask him to introduce himself.

Xavier Montoy: 02:30

Name is Xavier Montoy. So now we are at La Cite Des Tayandiers. It’s a place in Paris where designers and craftsmans can have a workshop to to work in the middle of Paris. So it’s developed by La Ville de Paris. You have designer, people who are working with paper, also with wood, like Maxime Bellonnier.

Xavier Montoy: 02:51

You have people working with algae also.

Sarah Monk: 02:53

With algae?

Xavier Montoy: 02:54

Yeah, algae, yeah. It’s a great place to also share knowledge or know how, and even we can share materials. If we need a machine or something that we don’t have, we can ask them if we can use their tools or so it’s a great place.

Sarah Monk: 03:09

I wonder whether we might go back to your story, really, where you were born and how you came to be doing this.

Xavier Montoy: 03:16

So I was born in Rouen, a small city in the middle of France near Lyon. And, well, for the anecdotes, I was collecting insects with my grandfather when I was maybe five, six years old, and he he was really fascinated by insects. And that’s how I will discover the beauty of nature. And way later in my work, I just refined his insect collection, and I was like, oh my god, yes. I forgot it.

Xavier Montoy: 03:46

It’s beautiful. And I was looking for different type of insects, I discovered the Sternocera quesinata, which is the beetles I’m working with. And they are responsibly collected. They are not endangered, and we can easily find a big quantity of them. That’s why I work with these species exclusively.

Sarah Monk: 04:06

And when you were little, did you have a regular education or an art education?

Xavier Montoy: 04:11

I had a regular education and also a more Cartesian education. I make a scientific baccalaureate study, and I was really hesitating between medicine study or art studies. And I had the intuition that it will be easier for me to bring biology and science into art and design, that bring design and art into medicine. So that’s why I choose design.

Sarah Monk: 04:37

Another artist in your family?

Xavier Montoy: 04:39

Well, my grandfather’s as I said to my first grandfather, loved nature. And the other one that I never met dreamed of being a woodworker, but his family doesn’t allow it to do so. So we work in bureau or stuff like that. And my parents really pushed me to the arts education. So and they are both medicine.

Sarah Monk: 05:01

They’re both doctors.

Xavier Montoy: 05:02

Doctors. Yeah.

Sarah Monk: 05:03

Oh, wow.

Xavier Montoy: 05:03

And my brother also is a doctor. So I’m the only one. The black sheep that was like, you know, I want to do arts.

Speaker 3: 05:09

That’s very nice because they encourage you.

Xavier Montoy: 05:11

Yeah. They are really supportive. So after the back, I went to in Paris, a design school where I studied product design. And then I went to It’s also a design school in Paris. It’s the only public school which is exclusively teaching design, industrial design.

Xavier Montoy: 05:33

And this school was very nice for me because it’s a very free education, and I had many projects with biology and also researcher. And I work with in biology, thanks to which is designer specialized in biomimicry. What’s biomimicry? So biomimicry aims to take inspiration from natural solution to apply them into engineering in order to be more ecological friendly or to find a solution from the big problem we are facing. And so at the beginning, I was more into science and design.

Xavier Montoy: 06:14

So project about synthetic biology, which is developing some DNA pieces that you put into bacteria, and then bacteria make you materials. So that was a project with L’Arstitu Pasteur, and it was for competition organized every year by the MIT in Boston. And so we developed our project. We were 15 students, three designers, biologists, physics. And we went to the MIT, and we won the gold medal for our project.

Xavier Montoy: 06:43

And that’s where I really start to focus more on biodesign.

Sarah Monk: 06:48

Gosh. Congratulations. Can you tell us more about that? So what DNA did you use?

Xavier Montoy: 06:52

Well, in fact, we did not use DNA. So it’s called Biobricks. It’s like LEGO, the small blocks that you can put together. And it works almost the same with DNA. You can take some DNA pieces that have functions, we call it.

Xavier Montoy: 07:09

So for example, to create silica to attach on specific material. And then you can combine these DNA fragments to make your own production line of DNA. And then bacteria works almost like microscopic industry that produce the materials.

Speaker 3: 07:27

And what were the materials that you were constructing?

Xavier Montoy: 07:29

So we were focusing on the arboviruses, which are diseases spread by mosquitoes. And we developed materials that work like a test if you want to know if you are pregnant or not. So you just crush mosquitoes on it, and it’s changed color if the mosquitoes have arboviruses in it. Because the main problem with arboviruses is that there is no vaccines or treatment. So we have to know where are the infected mosquitoes to avoid a human to be contaminated.

Xavier Montoy: 08:00

So these materials allow us to develop a whole project with a mosquito trap and an attestation with this material. That And allows us to make a cartography of where the infected mosquitoes are and then to give this cartography to public government to then help people avoiding those areas.

Speaker 3: 08:19

And then what happened for you after that competition?

Xavier Montoy: 08:22

It was a project, and then I have my diploma project. And I really started to question the way we use the livings for this project specifically because we were using bacteria and then modified our DNA to make them produce something. And then I focus on the relationship we have with living species that share the world with us. And during those six months, I make many researches, and then I find the Sternocera accusinata. And here, I start my project.

Sarah Monk: 08:56

Where did you find them?

Xavier Montoy: 08:57

Well, they are originally from Thailand, and I discovered this species on the Internet. And then I contacted a guy which has not a farm, but who has many of these beetles. And they live in forest in Thailand. Those species live two years at larva, so underground. And they are three weeks during the year where they are adults.

Xavier Montoy: 09:19

They go out of the ground. They reproduce, and then they die. And once they die, they collect the beetles and they sell the shield because it was an old tradition. And all my project was how to show this amazing material, which is iridescent and has amazing specificity, in a different way. Because if you just show the insect, many people are, ah, yeah, but it’s a bug.

Xavier Montoy: 09:43

It’s quite disgusting, or poor bug, or stuff like that. So I wanted to find a way to preserve the material and also to work with it easily because when you work with the shield directly, there’s a specific shape and you can do whatever you want. So that’s how I come to crush them, make some fragment of them. And I put them into cellulose acetate. So I have a composite material that I can work like wood.

Xavier Montoy: 10:11

And then I work with these materials to make jewelries and also some furnitures.

Speaker 3: 10:16

So right now, you’re buying them from Thailand? It’s sourcing?

Xavier Montoy: 10:21

Yeah. So I just bought them once. It was 5,000 elytra. So I have a big plank of beetle fragments, and then I work with it. The crazy thing with those beetles is that they are iridescent.

Xavier Montoy: 10:35

It’s a metallic color between blue and green, or it’s also gold or deep blue. And the amazing fact is that it’s not color pigment. It’s what we call structural color. So it just the relief on the top of the shield that diffracts the light and gives them those amazing colors. And so depending which what angle you look at the material, then the color change.

Speaker 3: 10:59

You transitioned from working with MIT and winning prizes to this work. Was there a moment where you just went, wow, this is what I want to do?

Xavier Montoy: 11:09

Yeah. So basically, I saw this material, I was like, Okay, it’s good to use biology to develop project and make science. But my feeling was it was most important to reveal the beauty of nature to make people understand that it’s such an amazing thing that when people will notice it, I hope they will be more conscious of the beauty of nature and the way that we have to take care of it.

Speaker 3: 11:37

What’s the reaction when you talk to people about, okay, you’re at a party or maybe with your parents and you say, okay, this is what I do. How explain it?

Xavier Montoy: 11:47

Well, at the beginning, people look me like, okay, I think you’re crazy. You’re crushing insects, you say you want to protect nature. But once you take time to talk with them and you show the work, and I think also that the intention you put in your project is way more important than the object itself. So when you take time to talk with people to say, Okay, just look at beautiful it is, and also that the species I’m working with is not in danger and is responsibly collected, then they start to understand. And also, people well, some people don’t understand and they’re like, okay.

Xavier Montoy: 12:22

You’re just a strange guy. But other people say, okay. So I never look at insects this way. And then I say, okay. Maybe it works a little bit.

Sarah Monk: 12:31

Another project I saw on your website I’d love to talk about or hear about, which is Amigos. Am I saying it right?

Xavier Montoy: 12:38

Imago. Yep.

Sarah Monk: 12:38

Can you tell us a little about that one?

Xavier Montoy: 12:40

Yeah. Sure. So for Imago, it has the same intention, which is showing the beauty of nature from another point of view. And so, Imago or Numeric Collage.

Speaker 3: 12:51

Collage?

Xavier Montoy: 12:52

Yeah. So I just find some pictures of insects, and then I assemble them together in another shape. And it also take inspiration from the psychology or

Sarah Monk: 13:04

Psychology.

Xavier Montoy: 13:05

Yeah. Psychology or roadshark test. Roadshark. Roadshark, yeah. So where you have some shapes and you have to see what you see in it.

Xavier Montoy: 13:15

And it’s the same here, so it’s more abstract shapes that I create with pieces of insects. And then people see whatever they want. But most importantly, they don’t immediately see the insect. So they see the color, the different shape. Then they’re, oh, okay.

Xavier Montoy: 13:30

It’s nice. I like it. And when they come closer, they see that it’s insects. And then they’re, ah, okay. And I did the same with some fishes, which are called the bettas.

Xavier Montoy: 13:40

The I don’t know in English, but say, the fighter fishes, because those fishes were used for fishes’ fights. Human take two of these fishes, put them in an aquarium, and then make them fight. And they also have crazy color, crazy shapes. But just when you put two males together, they start to fight. And so like the chicken fights in Yahweh, there also is fishes fight.

Xavier Montoy: 14:06

But this project is more well, it’s clearly an artistic one. And also, make many drawings. And this was another expression territory for me to work with pictures. So I developed material with the beetle shields, and I’m working with a society which is an expert of acetate cellulose transformation. So I have a dark sheet of acetate cellulose and a transparent one.

Xavier Montoy: 14:33

I put my little shield fragment on top of the black one, and then the transparent one is pressed on top of the other, and it encapsulates the fragment of the shields in it. And then I have this material that I’m working with.

Sarah Monk: 14:47

Oh, wow. It’s beautiful. So it sparkles, it’s iridescent. The base is black, and then we’ve got these beautiful blues and turquoises and greens.

Xavier Montoy: 14:56

So there are also called beetle jowls in Thailand. A very short period of time where they are like this. They go out of the ground, reproduce and then die.

Sarah Monk: 15:06

We were talking about the biodiversity and what would be the loss to the world if they did not exist?

Xavier Montoy: 15:12

Well, the thing is that we can’t know. It was the same for the mosquito It’s our project, and people say, Okay, but why don’t we erase mosquitoes from the earth? But every time a species disappear, we have many changes in the biodiversity, and it can be terrible. But for example, if you have no more insects, then you have no more birds. If you have no more birds, then you have no more, like, no foxes or mammals that eat birds, and then it starts to fall apart.

Xavier Montoy: 15:39

So that’s also the beauty of it, that it’s here. Like, for example, why are those beetles iridescent? We have no idea where they are, and that’s quite amazing because there is no really interest of developing such a material. There’s many billions of years to develop this specific structure on the shell to then defrag the light and maybe just to attract their sexual partner or something like that. But we don’t really know why, but that’s how it works.

Sarah Monk: 16:08

There’s a certain irony in such a beautiful and colorful species, being underground

Xavier Montoy: 16:14

Yeah.

Sarah Monk: 16:14

Yeah. For two years and only above ground for two weeks.

Xavier Montoy: 16:17

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. But it’s the same for the butterflies. I have many butterflies with crazy and amazing colors, and they are like chrysalids and larvae for months.

Xavier Montoy: 16:27

And the butterfly live only a few days. That’s a metaphor of the living that is beautiful but very fragile. And so we have to enjoy it as long as you can and make sure we don’t, well, destroy it or at least that just we noticed it. For me, it’s the most important.

Speaker 3: 16:43

Coming back to what you said earlier about your studies with the guy who learns about functionality from nature.

Xavier Montoy: 16:51

Yeah. Biomimicry.

Speaker 3: 16:52

Has that come into your thinking when you do this work?

Xavier Montoy: 16:56

Yeah. Sure. I wouldn’t be there where I am today if I didn’t meet Gillian Grave and if I didn’t start to learn about biomimicry because that’s where I discover how amazing nature was. For example, you have the spider. Their web is way more resistant than the tetanyum or any metal we can make at the same proportion.

Xavier Montoy: 17:18

We have also the termites, which are small insects. And they invented air conditioning without having to invent electricity because they live in what we call termite mounds. And they have to keep alive a small mushroom in the center of the termite mounds. And to do so, the air has to be about 20 degrees, I think. And they are living in Africa where the outside temperature can be 40 degrees, and during the night, minus one or zero degrees.

Xavier Montoy: 17:45

And to do so, they have many pipes into the termite mounds that make the air be cooling down during the days and warmer during the night. So nature has developed millions of techniques to solve the same problem or same issue that we are facing. And we just have to look at it to find more sustainable solution to solve our problematics. What about color? How does your own ability with color figure here?

Xavier Montoy: 18:12

Well, the funny thing is that I’m kind of color blind.

Speaker 3: 18:16

Me too.

Xavier Montoy: 18:16

Perfect. During my studies, I was very uncomfortable with color because I I couldn’t work with it. I was not very sensible to it. And I think also that the fact that I’m working with already existing colors that I don’t have to choose helps me a lot also because, well, I can’t decide the color of the shells, so I have to work with it. And, well, hopefully, it’s a beautiful color.

Xavier Montoy: 18:41

So

Speaker 3: 18:41

And my theory is that because we’re color blind, we compensate with perception of light.

Xavier Montoy: 18:47

Well, I’m not an expert on it, but if you say so. Yeah. But also with shapes, for me, the shapes are very important. I don’t know if it’s more than people that are not color blind, but really the Imago project, it’s more about shapes, not about color. We have the original beetle.

Xavier Montoy: 19:04

Mhmm. Then there is the what we call elytra. So that’s the part of the shield that protect the wings. And also the sound that they make, it’s quite interesting. It’s like metal parts are and so I I have those.

Xavier Montoy: 19:17

And then I, well, crush them into small fragments that you have here. And then those fragments, I use them to make my composite material that you see here. There are three different colors of these beetles. It’s like our eyes. It’s genetic mutation.

Xavier Montoy: 19:36

So they are green, gold, and blue. And the green one are the most common one. It’s 99% of the species that are green. And the blue and gold one is like 1%. So it’s more rare.

Xavier Montoy: 19:50

This one. Oh. That’s what I told you. Like this, it’s very green. And when you look at it like that, it’s becoming blue.

Sarah Monk: 19:57

And tell us the process.

Xavier Montoy: 19:59

For the furniture and specifically for the jewels, I work on computer. It’s almost the same process you said for the Imago, which is I have some shapes I like, and I collect them, and then I start to assemble them. And if you look at the jewels, you have two shapes. So it’s this one, which is like an oval and small circle. And for this one, I was inspired by the Egyptian shapes.

Sarah Monk: 20:26

I was going to say it looks Egyptian. So they are the circles, but they’ve got a lovely, beautiful frame around them of a metal design. And,

Xavier Montoy: 20:35

well, beetles in Egyptian mythology is very present. And also, this anniversary of the discovery of the Touton Camon, think. So that’s why I developed those shapes last year for this year. But as I said, we know that there are plenty of diamonds into our universe. Like, we have full planets made out of diamonds.

Xavier Montoy: 20:55

For example, We have meteorites that people want to go and to take the mineral diamonds and bring them back to Earth. But those species, like those beetles, as long as we know, we only have them on Earth. And once the species has disappeared, there will never be any more these materials anywhere in the universe. And so that’s also what I want to show you, the preciousness of this material, and that’s why I wanted to make jewels out of them. So in this box, you have many of my insect collection, and some of them were collected by my grandfather.

Xavier Montoy: 21:29

Almost all of them are in danger, so I don’t want to work with them because we just have to let them live. If you zoom in it, so you have to make it closer, you can see that it’s small small pieces, small ekai scales like turtles. So here we have three d printer. So this one and this one are three d printers. So it allows me to make prototype of the jewel or small pieces I’m designing because I’m working on my computer.

Xavier Montoy: 21:58

So first of all, I make some drawings, then I go on the three d on my computer. Then I print some prototype here in resin. Yes,

Sarah Monk: 22:07

resin. The material that you’ve created, you’ve got these beautiful squares now of the beetle material. So you put that

Xavier Montoy: 22:14

into Yeah. This put that into this machine and then with the client, we can select the piece of material and then I can cut it. And once I’m happy with the shape, I print them with wax and then send them to the metallurgist and then I have my pieces in silver or gold. Sometimes the jewels can look similar or have some inspiration in it, and because I really like symmetry.

Speaker 3: 22:38

What is your hope as far as what you accomplish with this?

Xavier Montoy: 22:42

Well, my hope is that people will start looking differently at the living that share the world with us. If they don’t like my word, as long as they are starting questioning their perception of the living, then for me, it’s good because normally they understand it. They can disagree with me, but we are starting a discussion, and that’s the most important part because I think also that art is a way to start a discussion about any topics in the world.

Sarah Monk: 23:14

So thanks to Xavier Montoy. You can discover more about him on his website, xaviermontoy.com, or find him on Instagram at xaviermontoy. And thanks to you for listening. As with all episodes, can find photographs of the work discussed on our website, materiallyspeaking.com, or on Instagram at materially speaking podcast. If you’re enjoying materially speaking, please subscribe to our newsletter on our website we can let you know when the next episode goes live.