The Times Of Israel: פרויקט FISHSkin

Seeking eco-friendly material, Israeli innovators look to scale up fish-skin handbags

Two Israeli researchers, one in the field of leather design and one in print technology, are seeking to revive the age-old craft of making leather from fish skin — a sustainable raw material generated from waste — and have produced eco-friendly handbags with different patterns and digital prints for the fashion industry.

The practice of transforming fish skin into leather, once used by indigenous Arctic people in Northern Europe and Asia to make garments and accessories, has been experiencing something of a comeback in recent years as the fashion industry is increasingly looking to become less wasteful. Fish leather has also caught the eye of high-end designers who want to incorporate it into luxury clothing items.

However, it has yet to break into the industrial end of the fashion world.

Ira Farber, head of the chemistry group at print manufacturing company Kornit Digital, and Ori Topaz, a designer at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, participated in an EU-funded research project that examined the viability of turning fish skins into an eco-friendly leather that can be produced at an industrial scale for the fashion industry. The project, initiated in 2020, was led by a research consortium of organizations and academic institutions from six countries.

As part of the joint project, Farber and Topaz combined creativity with engineering, overcoming the technological hurdles that faced digital ink printing on fish skin, to design and manually craft two artisanal handbags, which they say serve as a proof of concept that they can be manufactured on an industrial level.

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Print and handbag design: Ori Topaz, FISHSkin project