Leather&skins is one of the materials chosen in Weave Up! project because of its specific situation in textile and design fields nowadays. Technically, leather should only refer to animal skins that have been treated and tanned to withstand different conditions of heat and humidity. As leather production remains a polluting industry, whether during washing, tanning or dyeing processes, proposals have emerged for an organic solvent environment for example, vegetable tanning or for the use of alternative leathers.

From this perspective, Hernâni Reis Baptista, leather&skins master designer, decided to focus on these alternatives to improve the various existing recipes, to find new applications and to help young designers to explore new horizons during workshop time.

Visiting different locations in Portugal, in 2023, such as CITEVE, CTIC and Fabrica Roldes, and ICTYOS in Lyon (France) during 2024, allowed participants to truly discover the production and transformation processes of animal leather as well as leather alternatives.

Leather&skins workshop was about transformation experiments of by-products, waste and natural ingredients to create bio-materials. The intention was to create a space for reflection on how we relate to the world, whether through the natural or the constructed and artificial, and using the fewest tools so it can be done easily at home or in an industrial process