American Artists Developed Elegant "Leather" Accessories To Make Mycelium Materials.

The American artist Phil Ross and his team developed the manufacture.

New method.

Instead of animal skin this time, it is a mycelium of mushrooms, a silk like substance that grows on the roots of mushrooms.

There are two main steps to breed this new type of leather: the first is to decompose the mycelia.

The second is to reconstitute the remaining sugar and protein.

After that, they will dry the finished products in the sun, so that the color will be deepened, and then they can be used.

Compared with animal leather, the advantages of mycelia are not only able to free animals from killing.

First, it takes less time to get a mycelial leather.

It takes only a few weeks to make a sample of cattle size, and it takes almost three weeks for a cow to take the same area of skin.

Second, the production process is more environmentally friendly.

Make use of animal skin

On average, each pair produces 33 pounds of carbon dioxide, while using mycelial leather has almost zero carbon emissions.

In addition, mycelial leather is very plastic.

Phil and his team have used it to produce animal skin effects such as cowhide and snake skin, and have already introduced samples of leather belts and bags.

Next year, Phil plans to open a manufacturing plant in the Gulf area.

They estimate that the initial production cost will be almost the same as that of high-grade leather.

But within four years, with the increase in production, they estimate that the cost of producing a square foot (about 0.09 square meters) of mycelial leather is only $5, which will cost less than almost all the leather available on the market.

At present, several leather shoe manufacturers have said that they will order leather from their hands after next year's production.

But this is not the first time Phil has used mycelium.

As early as 2009, he made bricks out of mycelia and built a building structure named Mycotectural Alpha.

This artwork has also been exhibited in the Design and Violence unit of the Museum of modern art in New York.