This fridge is manufactured by the company Mitticool, which was founded by Mansukhbhai Prajapati. Prajapati grew up in Nichimandal, a village outside of Morbi, India, where early on he was exposed to traditional clay pottery through the family trade. After a disaster involving the breakdown of the Macchu Dam, his family moved to the town of Wankaner and he began work as a trainee in a small rooftop tile manufacturer. Here, he explored using mass-produced tile manufacturing techniques with pottery, which enabled him to press 700 earthenware pans a day compared to the usual tally of 100 pieces a day by hand. After an earthquake hit Gujarat province in 2001, killing tens of thousands, Prajapati was inspired to work on a rural fridge that did not need electricity to run, and that was affordable for the masses. The result was the Mitticool fridge which launched in 2005. The company product range has since diversified to include a range of clay cookware.

The refrigerator is made from terracotta clay and has been described by the company as eco-friendly due to the fact that it does not use any electricity or artificial energy to run, therefore incurring no running costs. The top of the fridge is filled with water, and then the contents are cooled via the evaporation of the water in the porous clay. The Mitticool is front loading and the dual purpose water reservoir acts as a both cooling mechanism as well as a cool water dispenser. The company claims that vegetables kept in the fridge keep fresh for up to a week and that the fridge can also be used to store dairy products. In India, with its traditional joint family structures, simple access to refrigeration can mean an improvement to quality of life, as less time is needed on shopping for ingredients and preparing food for the family. The word ‘Mitti’ means clay in Hindi.

This object is a contemporary re-working of an age old means of keeping perishables cool. The V&A has a number of examples of jars in the Middle East collection that use a similar cooling technique of exploiting water evaporation in porous clay (for instance: 761-1902; 921-1875; 925-1875).

This refrigerator was acquired as part of the Shekou Project, an international partnership between the V&A and China Merchant Shekou Holdings (CMSK) to open a new cultural platform called Design Society in Shekou. The fridge was included in the inaugural exhibition, ‘Values of Design’, in the V&A Gallery at Design Society as an example of problem solving in situations of scarcity.