London based textile studio Pinaki Studios has collaborated with premium chocolate retailer Chocolátl to create edible chocolate surfaces.

(Click the images below for full sized images)

Pineapple Pleat, chocolate on the left, textile right

Edible Surfaces draws inspiration from, and combines, the processes of chocolate artisans and textile manipulations such as pleating, creasing and embossing. The project investigates parallels in the technical methods of those crafts as well as inventive concepts for the development of edible objects.

Tubular Pleat

Arantza Vilas, owner and founder of Pinaki Studios, and Leslie Vanderleeuw and Erik Spande, the partnership behind Chocolatl, coincidently met and discovered a mutual passion for design, craft, food, materials and chocolate.

What they discovered was that material exploration is common to both textile development and confectionary: temperature control, moulding and chemical processes are key elements common to both.

Diamond Pleat

Says Vilas, "The starting points used for the project were textile experiments on pleated silk crepe dyed with natural rust. The aesthetics of these fabrics were already suggestive of chocolate: they had the grainy qualities that some chocolates have.

Cube Pleat

"Different types of materials were investigated to be able to use progressively more complex forms of pleating and creasing. After an initial stage understanding the different material behaviour some of the chocolate outcomes began to inform the fabrics too: shiny and matt surfaces, subtle metallic finishing, embossing effects on leather."

Cracker Pleat

"The result of this investigation is a collection of chocolate and fabric pieces that inform each other, that display similar aesthetic qualities but very different properties."

Edible surfaces is sponsored by Rococo Chocolates and will be presented, chocolate pieces alongside the textile pieces they were inspired by, during Dutch Design Week from October 20 to 28, 2012.

+ pinakistudios.com
+ chocolatl.nl