NACRE
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THE HOUSE

A materials house that manufactures light

Founded on a single, testable claim: color is geometry.

NACRE was established to industrialize a phenomenon that nature settled long before us. The blue of a Morpho wing, the shift across an abalone shell, the fleeting spectrum of a soap film — none of these contain pigment. Their color is the product of thin-film interference: light reflecting off stacked layers a few hundred nanometers thick, certain wavelengths reinforced, others cancelled. We build those layers on purpose, to tolerance.

Our founding thesis is that a hue specified as a film thickness is more durable, more precise, and more honest than a hue mixed from dye. Pigment fades because molecules degrade. Structure does not. We hold deposition tolerances under five nanometers and certify every batch against a measured peak wavelength, not a swatch. The work sits between optics and craft, and we treat both with the same discipline.

NACRE-LAB-00 MATERIAL  Thin-film dielectric stack on float glass PEAK REFLECTANCE WAVELENGTH  512 nm ± 4 nm
< 5 nm Deposition tolerance
0 % Pigment content
2019 Founded
1,840 Characterized specimens
FROM VAPOR TO RECORD

How a color is made

Five stages, each measured before it advances.

  1. 01 / DEPOSITION

    Deposition

    Dielectric layers are grown atom by atom under vacuum, each film tuned to a target thickness in nanometers.

  2. 02 / INTERFERENCE

    Interference tuning

    Layer stacks are modeled against Fresnel equations so the reinforced wavelength lands exactly on the specified hue.

  3. 03 / SUBSTRATE

    Substrate bonding

    The optical stack is fused to its carrier — glass, polymer, or anodized metal — without adhesives that scatter light.

  4. 04 / METROLOGY

    Spectral characterization

    A spectrophotometer reads peak wavelength, bandwidth, and angular shift across the full visible range.

  5. 05 / QA

    Quality assurance

    Each specimen is certified against its measured wavelength, logged, and assigned an identity before release.

CATALOGUED PERSONNEL

The people, as specimens

Each member is recorded the way we record matter — by property and provenance.

NACRE-P-01

Dr. Mireille Sandoz

FOUNDER / OPTICAL PHYSICIST

Built NACRE's first interference stack on borrowed vacuum equipment; still signs off every peak-wavelength certificate.

NACRE-P-02

Kweku Adjei

HEAD OF DEPOSITION

Holds the house tolerance under five nanometers; treats a chamber pressure curve the way a printer treats ink.

NACRE-P-03

Lena Vholt

METROLOGY LEAD

Reads spectra the way others read faces; trusts the spectrophotometer over the eye, always.

NACRE-P-04

Tomas Errazuriz

SUBSTRATE & MATERIALS

Bonds optical stacks to glass and metal so the color survives heat, flexion, and a decade of light.