At Material Connexion, I found many interesting materials, many of them have fascinating concepts, and they also have many collaborations with many famous companies, like BMW, PUMA, etc. At first I thought some of them are not so realistic in production and manufacturing, Later as I found out, most of them are provided by companies, which means they are actually doable. I particularly love some of the ideas which carries an eco-friendly concept behind, to me they are more attractive.
From these hundreds of material samples, I found few that I was very drawn into the idea and concepts.
the first one this piece of leather. Without reading the information below, I would really consider it as a normal leather since the texture is really alike, and when you touch it, it feels very alike as well. It is leather, but it is actually made from salmon skin. I doubt many people like me would not realized that salmon skin is a repurposed by-product, and it can be used to created premium exotic leather. I remember while I was doing researching few weeks before, I looked up many research information and articles about leather, and all of them hit many about how it is harmful for the animals, and how leather producing process is damaging the environment. What is more friendly about this is that this piece of salmon skin is a waste from fish canneries, the manufacturer has developed a low environmental impact process to tank and dye the salmon skin while retaining their pigmentation and texture.
This is also another leather-like example that are made by 100% eelskin, which has a smooth surface, and it is quite strong for its thickness. And for this piece, what attracted me is actually this yellowish color.
The another material is this piece. This one looks like an art pieces that hangs in an art gallery, it gives a sense of exotic feeling, like something that you could find in Mid-East countries. I was doing many weaving textile exploring during these weeks, so this id defiantly draws my interests. It is a handloom fabric that was produced from recycled newspapers. The manufacturer dyed those newspaper sheets into different color, and cut them into strips with different sizes, and hand loomed them on a machine. I think many of us, actually all of us can easily find many of this kinds of wasted newspapers sheets, or any other unwanted papers, but we didn’t realized they are actually useful, it can makes up such a beautiful interior accessories.
I did many fabrication exploration with denim and indigo color, so I kind interested in these two as well.
This first one is made from natural ingredients, and used an ancient technique to dyed the fabric, which only used indigo leaves, wood-ash, limestone and wheat bran. Therefore, all the wastes that are produced from this process are recycled back as fertilizer.
this one is a hand-woven textile composed of cotton blended with wild. It is also dyed via natural materials that derived from plants and tree bark.