Designer Sarmite Polakova uses pine bark to make a versatile leather-like material which she calls PineSkins. The bark is normally just a by-product of the timber industry, but Polakova treats it with a softening biological solution and natural wax to turn it into a very useful material.
PineSkins offers an alternative production process for the timber industry, broadening the focus from wood production alone. By approaching the bark as a valuable product in itself, she hopes to create a new craft that will provide new sources of income for local populations, and prompt a new appreciation of humble materials from their local forest.
Sarmite Polakova is a material and product designer who focuses on developing sustainable materials and production techniques that help create a circular economy. Her work is geared mainly to transforming humble natural materials to serve a new purpose. Polakova combines experimental research with manipulation of existing design methods, leading to a design idiom specifically tailored to each material, and making the objects the main conveyor of the narrative.