The Jackfruit pillow
I did not want sustainability to mean compromising the suitability of the material. Instead of taking an existing product and substituting the materials with sustainable ones, I wanted to use a material simply because it's the most appropriate choice.
I was fascinated by the texture and structure of a jackfruit peel. If you've held a jackfruit in your palm, you know the accupuncture-like sensation it gives. This project was an attempt to use it to develop a lifestyle product. What came about was a lot of experimentation with preserving and tooling the peel.
PS - I'm working on an accessible version of this project at the moment. If you use assistive technologies, please reach out to me directly and I can help with providing an accessible version of the data presented here
Duration: 2 weeks | Classroom project
The Goal
I had the lofty idea of creating bio leather from jackfruit peels. As enticing as that was, doing that while preserving the texture was difficult.
I decided to try all of the following and see what happens. These methods were inspired by the processes used to tan animal hides.
The experiments
Here is a gallery of images with jackfruit peels at different stages of the experimentation. I finally decided to go with the sun-dried peels. All of these experiments were noted down, and the results were exposed to tooling processes to understand the workability of the material.
Click or hover on the images to learn more.
Crafting the product
Sun-drying the peels led to substantial warping of the material. The peel was flattened to an extent with a heat gun, and then cut into smaller, toolable pieces
Since they were a little too prickly for long hours of use, the pieces were grinded and finished for more durability. A pillowcase was fashioned to mount them for use as a foot and chair pillow.
The end result
