As part of Aesthetics of Sustainability, a research project developed by écal in which several sustainable and eco friendly materials were tested to understand better their characteristics and advantages with the purpose of making them more appealing, I was assigned to experiment with banana fiber.
This material comes from India, where banana trees grow. Everytime the banana is harvested, they have to take the whole tree down. The fiber comes from the stem of the plant which after being cut down is either left in the fields or dried and combed and used to make crafts.
The challenge was to run different tests on the material and make a swatch book to show the use of some techniques and the possible applications.
I realised that the fibers have uneven lengths, so I made ropes using the loger ones and wove them using different techniques. Afterwards, I took the shorter fibers, put them together with the ropes and used them as bristles. The result were 12 brushes made only using banana fiber.
Material Banana fiber
