Observations on wool and felt
“Felt covers the body and protects the soul.”
Mongolian proverb
When malatsion invited me to collaborate on the art project New Skin For A Landscape, I had a vague image of felts in front of me and not, as she suggested, of recycled fabrics. Since we want to create together with people, communicating the way of handling the material is an important step to the success of the project. So I thought pragmatically about the level of difficulty of the relevant skills and felting seemed to me easier and more accessible than working with fabrics. This is what my own experience told me, as well as my observations in schools, in my workshops and at the Quilting Bee.
Whatever I knew about raw wool up to that point, I had learned it from my spinning teacher Abby Franquemont. For Abby, spinning by hand is a human need, and passing on this ancient method of transformation is of fundamental importance. It is no coincidence that with the invention of flexible and stable structures such as strings and fabrics, mankind was able to produce not only useful but also meaningful things. From then on, fishing nets were knotted and pieces of wood were joined with hewn stones to make axes. The impressive string skirts saw the light of day. They served women in their fertile years as a symbolic sign rather than as protection from the cold or to cover their shame.
Taking raw wool in my hands, feeling its fibre structure, sensing the presence of nature, of the sheep and entrusting myself to an ancient tradition was a deep and moving experience for me, and is now a constant joy in my life. It takes surprisingly little to turn loose fibres into a sturdy thread and yet it is amazingly complex at the same time. The hand needs a lot of experience. A harmonious balance is required between what the fibre does and the twist made by the hand-turned spindle. In this way, endless variations of yarns can be produced, which in turn can be used to create infinitely complex woven, knitted or bobbin lace structures, to name but a few. The simpler the tools, the more skills are required. Basically, a small stick and some raw wool are enough to spin a thread. The process of felting is even simpler.
“With united hands, for united happiness, we make the felt.
Let it be as strong as the roots of the sky, as enduring as the steppe.
May this felt protect our family as the steppe protects us.”
Prayer during the felting by the nomads of Mongolia.
The best-known felting traditions come from nomadic peoples in Mongolia, from Kyrgyzstan, China, Russia and Turkey. The Central Asian steppes were called the land of felt by the Chinese in the 4th century BC. Emblematic examples of the felt culture are the yurts, which are actually called “ger” by the Mongols or “öj” by the Kyrgyz. Their outer skin consists of thick white felt mats that protect against moisture, wind and cold, and are at the same time fire-resistant. The interior of the yurt is also lined with felt carpets. They are colourful and patterned. Together, these felt mats and carpets form a tried-and-tested protective skin for a nomadic life and are beautiful to look at. Many people work together for about a week to create a large piece of felt. Horses or camels often help with the physically hard work of felting and fulling.
Felt – “vilz” in Middle High German - is of West Germanic origin and means “stamped mass”. The latter describes the felting process and the result quite vividly. The wool fibres are tightly and stably bonded together by friction. For wet felting we need water, vinegar or soap, strength, patience, that is time, and for large pieces, cooperation with others. Its production does not require large equipment such as looms or a roof over your head.
Wool also tells us something about the landscaping and land use of the textile industry. Sheep's wool was used for textile production from around 6,000 BC. After the invention of synthetic fibres and due to its time-consuming and labour-intensive production methods, its use declined drastically. Breeds that had been bred for the quality of wool fibres until the beginning of the 20th century were neglected or almost died out. Breeding today focuses on meat and dairy sheep. The latter should ideally have hardly any fur, as is the case of the French Lacaune breed. In Germany, raw wool is considered waste. Nevertheless, sheep are used for landscape maintenance and garden centres are discovering the benefits of wool as a fertilizer. The slow fashion movement and authors, such as Sofi Thanhauser in her book Worn - A History of Clothing, see the revival of the use of sustainable fibres and the associated production methods as a possible way out of the fast fashion issue.
malatsion thankfully accepted my suggestion to choose raw wool as an artistic material and so we set out together, got raw wool from local sheep and started testing various washing instructions. We were able to observe how the wool mass turns into a sponge, soaks up water and transports the precious liquid from one bucket to another during the rinsing process. It is a wonderful analogy to the sponge landscape; after all, the wool is supposed to symbolically become the new skin of the landscape in the planned artwork!
Experiencing yourself handling the material while felting, feeling the wool fibres in your hand, smelling them and immersing yourself in the repetition of the actions of plucking and felting with a sense of flow - all this can, like a meditation, bring you to open up and calm down. If we do this in commu-nity with others, we generate and foster a creative space in which we give ourselves time and familiarity with ourselves, with others and with the worldly things around us. In this space, anything is possible!
If we turn our attention to nature and its manifestations, individually empathise with its content and understand it with our hands, we can make a positive contribution to society and revitalise our relationship with nature. Together with others, we can shape a serene and sustainable future through many small movements.
21 October 2024
The text was created on the occasion of the project - New Skin For A Landscape - from 2024 by Studiospace with malatsion and was published in the publication of the same name.
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