Jan Campbell, an artisan based in the west of Ireland, turns a part of the avocado most people throw away into the starting point of her sculptural work. The idea surfaced in 2014, while she was preparing an avocado for lunch and hesitated to drop the pit into the bin, feeling it was too interesting an object to discard. She carried the stone in her coat pocket for a few days until an accidental scratch revealed a deep orange pigment beneath the surface, which led her to pick up a set of lino-cutting tools and engrave her first face into the dried material. Once dry, the pit hardens into a texture close to dense wood, giving her a surprisingly durable surface for fine detail work.
Campbell’s carvings draw heavily on Celtic folklore, populating her small-scale pieces with forest spirits, long-haired goddesses, bearded figures, and clusters of wild mushrooms pulled from the mythology of the Irish woodlands. Each stone’s irregular shape and grain direct how a character emerges, so the carving process stays closely tied to the material’s own form rather than a fixed template. Beyond the original pits, she has expanded her practice to bronze casting, giving some figures a more permanent, metallic counterpart to the organic originals.
The broader value of Campbell’s work lies in how it reframes food waste as raw material: her entire process is eco- and vegan-friendly, relying on pits that would otherwise be discarded after a meal. Finished pieces, sold individually through Etsy and shipped in handmade gift boxes, range roughly between £70 and £130, and she currently does not take commissions, keeping each figure a one-off result of whatever pit she happens to be working with. The approach reflects a patient, low-waste form of craftsmanship, where sustainability and traditional carving skill move forward together rather than being treated as separate goals.
More info: Website, Etsy, Instagram.
