Fish leather

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Made in

Animal material 55 Biodegradable 205 Textile 77

Fish leather

Photos: Lyy Raitala

The art of turning fish into leather

In a timeframe of extreme change and a shift from global to local, from city to country and from virtual to analog it does motivate to go back to our roots and therefore to nature. While working on this project there were questions coming up. What do we have around us? What can we do with it? How much value do we want to give? The market is flooded with textile material and overconsumption. This motivates the Designer to recycle, transform and bring alive new materials like fish skin. For one ton of fish we waste 40 kilogram of beautiful high quality skin. A skin that can be transformed to leather. Made of only two natural ingredients, this material is wholly organic and biodegradable, sustainable and uses low energy to produce. The leather is waterproof and stable, the transformation from the skin to the leather includes sun and time. It opens doors to so many ways of using it while recycling the skin of a fish.

Additional information

With a sharp object like a seashell the fish skin gets cleaned and the scales removed. The procedure of a massage with a yoke and organic soap helps the designer to replace the water in the material with oil. The prepared leather gets dried in the sun for a few days.

Information submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank.

Ingredients

Fish skin from salmon and haddock, yoke, organic soap, water.