Solar Handbag by Diffus

Diffus creates a solar handbag

Luxury handbag becomes a portable power station when miniaturized solar cells and embroideries are combined…

With the boom of environmental consciousness, bags with integrated solar cells to charge your mobile phone or laptop have become commonplace. The usual approach of placing flexible thin film solar modules onto messenger type bags, however, has primarily led to products in a outdoor/leisure category. Diffus Design has teamed up with e.g. Swiss embroidery specialist Forster Rohner and Alexandra institute (DK) to challenge this approach.

A handbag that charges your mobile, helps you find your keys and looks amazing! 
In the daytime hours one hundred small solar power stations distributed on The Solar Handbag generate enough electricity to charge a mobile device and a powerful lithium ion battery hidden in a small compartment. At night or in dark surroundings, opening the bag activates optical fibres attached to the inside of the bag that give a diffuse glow and assist in the search for keys, purse or other objects of vital importance.

An aesthetic approach to function
The desire to create a solar energy harvesting surface that offers maximum design freedom while still being highly efficient is the driving force behind The Solar Handbag. Working around existing technologies is not an option: Most textile-based products have limited surface areas available and therefore thin film solar cells have limitations regarding efficiency and aesthetics. The technology behind The Solar Handbag is based on miniaturizing the currently most efficient photovoltaic material, monocrystalline silicon, into oversized sequins and processing them through traditional textile techniques.

The shape of the bag resembles the story between the relationship between the sun and moon – between light source and enlightened. Therefore the shape mimics an eclipse where the moon – the enlightened – interfere or interact with the sun – the light source. The surface is embroidered with an integrated combination of normal embroidery and conductive embroidery that is able to convey the energy harvested for the solar sequins to the rechargeable battery.

Promise of a powerful future
The Solar Handbag illustrates the first development step towards highly efficient, textile based solar cell surfaces. The first generation of solar elements shows an efficiency of 9% when converting solar energy into electrical energy. Overall, the solar elements distributed on The Solar Handbag are able to generate 2 Watts, more than enough energy to charge a mobile device, even at low daily exposure to sunlight. The next generation of solar elements are already promising – the new developments will double the efficiency.

12,000-Year-Old Textile Fragments Found in Peruvian Cave Are South America's Oldest | Ecouterre

12,000-Year-Old Textile Fragments Found in Peruvian Cave Are South America's Oldest | Ecouterre

Archaeologists have unearthed fabric and rope fragments that date as far back as 12,000 years in the past, making them the oldest known textiles in South America, according to a report in the April 2011 issue of Current Anthropology. Although the textiles were recovered from a cave in the Andes three decades ago, their age was largely unknown. Researchers chose to estimate the age of the site by taking radiocarbon dates from bone, obsidian, and charcoal—articles that can sometimes produce iffy results, says Edward Jolie, an archaeologist at Mercyhurst College who led the current team. Charcoal especially can overestimate a site’s age, he adds.

Textile Design professor EJ Herczyk to exhibit at Abington Art Center Solo Series 2011

On view May 14-July 31, 2011

Abington Art Center’s galleries will be transformed by four contemporary artists each presenting a solo exhibition. On view will be work by EJ Herczyk (Philadelphia, painting) Eva Mantell (Princeton, paper sculpture) Jedediah Morfit (Collingswood, relief sculpture and installation) and Thomas Vance(Philadelphia, sculpture and works on paper).

There will be a public reception and opening party on Sunday, May 15 from 3-5pm.

Directions - http://abingtonartcenter.org/visits/

Conversation at the Bard Graduate Center

Working Fabric: Innovation in Design at KnollTextiles
Conversation moderated by Brooke Hodge
Thursday, May 19, 2011, 6:00pm-9:00pm
at the Bard Graduate Center
38 W 86th Street, NY, NY

About Knoll Textiles, 1945-2010

From May 18 to July 31, 2011, the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture (BGC) presents Knoll Textiles, 1945–2010, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to a leading producer of modern textile design. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue consider the individuals and ideas that helped shape Knoll Textiles from its founding to 2010, with the goal of bringing the sartorial dimension of the Knoll brand and the under-recognized role of textiles in the history of modern interiors and design to the forefront of public attention. The lack of recognition of modern textiles is perhaps best exemplified by the iconic “Womb” chair by Eero Saarinen. While it is featured in most twentieth-century design collections, its fabric, usually a Knoll textile and a dominant design element of the chair, is rarely if ever identified.

The curators of the exhibition are Earl Martin, associate curator at the BGC; Paul Makovsky, editorial director, Metropolis magazine; Angela Völker, Curator Emeritus of Textiles at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna; and Susan Ward, an independent textile historian. The exhibition comprises approximately 175 examples of textiles, furniture, photographs, and ephemera on loan from public, private, and corporate collections, including the Museum of Modern Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Smithsonian Institution, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; Yale University Art Gallery; the Brooklyn Museum; the Knoll Museum; and the KnollTextiles Archive.

Interestingly, the lack of museological and historical interest in modern textiles became apparent as the various loans for this exhibition were secured. For example, key works from Knoll’s innovative handwoven collection of the 1950s were found in boxes of scraps preserved for more than fifty years in the attic of a former Knoll employee and large samples dating to 1948, the second year of production for Knoll Textiles, languished in storage for decades at one of America’s leading design collections without formally entering the collection until they were recognized by Bard’s curatorial team.

Another major contribution of this exhibition has been the discovery in private collections of furniture with its original upholstery. Not only were these rare examples of early upholstery on Knoll furniture brought to light, but a major conservation project was subsequently undertaken that revealed the challenges of properly conserving twentieth-century furniture—of preserving not simply the furniture form but also the textile covering it.

Senior Exhibit

Three M.S. Textile Design and ten B.S. Textile Design students will be exhibiting in this years Senior Exhibit, running May 9th - 15th - Hours 9am - 8pm - Bucky Harris Gymnasium - Gallagher Athletic Center. Reception - Friday May 13th 6pm - 8pm.