Do you remember the olden days when our forefathers, lacking computers, had to carve their meshes from wood?

Neither do I. So I’m not sure what I was thinking when I ordered a sample pack of Wood-Skin. Made in Italy, this flexible, pre-cut, wood-based product is intended to “bridge the gap between contemporary fabrication processes and the complex forms emerging from digital design software.”

My sample pack of Wood-Skin. What do I do with this stuff?

As you can see from the photo above, Wood-Skin has been pre-cut into triangular facets (it comes in sheets with 3 different sizes of triangles) with a fabric layer laminated in between to give the product flexibility. So it looks like a 3D surface mesh and then the company tosses in that “digital design software” line and it seems like a perfect tie-in for us.

But in a complete failure of imagination, it’s been sitting on my desk for months and I can’t come up with a single idea for making something practical with it. (Obviously, you can’t do much with the sample pack. The real product comes in much larger sheets with a full range of sizes and finishes.) Of course, I could just punt and get a big sheet and hang it from the ceiling all wiggly and shine a light through it so the seams glow.

So what I’d like you to do is visit www.wood-skin.com, read the info, look at the pictures, watch the videos, and then tell me what you’d make of it. (First person who says a hat, broach, or pterodactyl is disqualified.)