RAINFOREST CANVAS, the Vegetable Leather from Amazonia

Taygra launches ethical shoes 100 % handmade, using innovative and ecological materials, and introduces on the market the Vegetable Leather or "Rainforest Canvas", coming from extractives reserves of Amazonia, in strict respect of the man and its environment. To watch the movie on the handmade manufacture of this material, click on the following picture:

Models silver-plated burlap and Vegetable Leather	Models burlap and Vegetable Leather	Model Cotton and Vegetable Leather	Model 100% Vegetable Leather	Model 100% Vegetable Leather

	This material is realised on a cotton or burlap frame, & the milk of latex is poured on it. The process is 100 % handmade, the production of this material is therefore very limited, requests the experience of small farmers. By this transformation of the rubber, they succeed in getting worthy incomes which allow them to stay living in the reserve. This allows them to preserve it from the threat of the frequent plagues of lumbering companies that take trees from the forbidden places. Reserves are divided into corentings, each inhabitant has to protect his space and to forbid the entrance to non-allowed persons. They have a small orchard, domestic animals, and can fish or go hunting.
	The inhabitants of these reservations are affiliated to a labour union to whom they sell the latex. The rubber is estracted in a respectful way, the trunk is lacerated in a cyclic way to regenerate the sap, and gives to the tree more longevity and vivacity. With the fall of the rate of the latex on the world market, due to the export of seeds of rubber tree in southeast Asia in the eighties, the raw material is sold at a sacrificed price, and doesn't allow the farmers to get the minimum income. The transformation of the latex into Vegetable Leather allows them to get earnings 10 time higher.
	However, it is a hard job, the handcrafter must use a milk of not coagulated latex, and therefore it must perform his harvest in less than 12 hours, or the milk becomes an eraser which will be used only for the manufacture of tyres or condoms.
	The support of the rubber is fixed on a frame, then the farmer pours the milk of latex regularly. The milk can be tinted with biological natural colouring agents, or with the smoke that confers on it a brown colour more or less made darker according to the length of operation of this technique, very edel and looking like animal leather. Besides, this delicate technology allows the latex to loose considerably its strong typical original smell. The smoking technique is accomplished in a Indian type hut, with an opening in the ceiling for the circulation of the dense smoke obtained in a smoking chimney made out of earth. What is used to make the smoke is the nut of babaçu palmtree.
	The canvas has to go trough various stages of drying at the sun or in a steamroom, and the thickness of the leather will depend on the quantity of baths of rubber milk on the canvas. 6 bathes in average are required, more on the burlap.
	The realisation of a canvas frame requires about 30 minutes. according to climatic conditions and availability in raw material (milk of rubber tree), the handcrafter and his family will be able to create up to 20 frames a day. If they has an steamroom, they will then then be able to double their production.
	The Rainforest Canvas can allow to make TAYGRA shoes, but also a range of fashion clothes, accessories, jewellery, etc...
	TAYGRA is proud to be pioneer and to throw this new edel material on the market. TAYGRA wants to praise the quality of the men and the handmade job of the seringueiros & workers of the COOPFLORA labour union of Mochadinho d' Oeste in the state of Rondonia, South Amazonia.