The contemporary reverence for leather is rejected in favour of a more brutal approach, which sees the material boiled and stretched to achieve compelling forms and rigidity.

 

The stool demonstrates how leather, once the industrial material of its age, can again be used for industrial applications, by being rid of its staid luxury connotations.

 

Leather is heated to alter the tannin and collagen structure in the skin, achieving an irreversible plastic hardness that does not soften. This radical transformation, surely a type of alchemy, sees a flexible natural material endowed with structural integrity and strength that is more commonly found in plastics or timber.

 

The process has presented Hasan with opportunities to explore how such an ancient craft technique can be made relevant to 21st Century product design and manufacture.

 

The self-supporting Twist stool only contains a plywood ring frame in the seat, which is necessary to form the leather over before boiling. The structural integrity comes from the processed material itself.