HUT up BERLIN

Felting in one of a kind beautiful objects, all handcrafted in the traditional way from pure wool. From home and office accessories, to baby clothes, hats, scarves, adult clothing and decorative items. The designs are simply clean and have a warmth in them that enhances the tactile quality of the material, usually in solid colors but with witty elements; some funny, cute or unexpected thread that will pull a smile of you.

All handmade things that easily challenge the modern without being cold designs.

Hut up is showen as part of the Hewitt Copper Museum exhibition on Felt currently open.

www.hutup.de

WOOL by the International Year of Natural Fibers -ONU

What is it?

What is it?

Sheep were among the first animals to be domesticated, and the first textiles were probably woven from their fleece. Today wool is still the world's leading animal natural fibre: its complex protein structure is responsible for unique characteristics and properties ?such as exceptional resilience and elasticity - that synthetic fibres just cannot match. Wool varies from super fine Merino fibre similar to cashmere, to very coarse hairy wools. The diameter of the fibre determines its final use and value - some 37 percent of world production is classed as fine wools, 22 percent as medium wools, and 41 percent as coarse wools. Two thirds of the wool harvest is used in the manufacture of garments, and about one third in carpets, upholstery and rugs. Industrial uses of wool - such as in insulation - accounts for about 5 percent of the total.

Who produces it?

Wool is produced in about 100 countries from a global flock of more than one billion head of sheep. Major producers are Australia, Argentina, China, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom and Uruguay. Depending on the country and region, wool producers range from small farmers to large scale commercial grazing operations.

Lietus

How is it produced?

Sheep are usually shorn once a year in the spring/summer months, although in some countries shearing may take place as many as three times a year. Where production systems are advanced, the wool is rigorously tested to determine properties and different grades are packed separately. The second step in the production chain is so-called "early" processing, in which the wool is scoured to remove grease and dirt, then carded and combed. The semi-processed wool is then spun into yarn for use in fabrics, knitted garments or hand-knitting wool.

How much is produced?

FAO estimates annual wool production at around 2.1 million tonnes a year. Australia produces one fifth of that total, while China, New Zealand, Iran, Argentina and the UK each produced more than 50 000 tonnes in 2005. Exports of greasy plus scoured wool amount to around 800 000 tonnes annually. Like cotton, much of this is imported by processing countries for manufacture and subsequent re-export.

What are the prospects for wool?

Being a luxury fibre, demand for wool is sensitive to economic trends. The current global economic slowdown is expected to affect wool negatively, particularly by reducing demand in China, the world's biggest wool market. Also, falling oil prices may reduce the cost of synthetic fibres. To compete with synthetics, the wool industry continues to invest in new technologies which have made wool more attractive to consumers (e.g. crease resistance and washability) and given it a wider range of uses, such as "active sportswear".

www.naturalfibres2009.org/en/fibres/wool.html

www.iwto.org

Abitax Japan

Hand felted and simple design.
Have only three items on felt but all details are worked out on without flaws. The focus goes on cell phones, digital cameras and keys; all colorful solutions. No statement just the objects on themselves, practical and ever lasting to protect your gear.

http://abitax.co.jp/

Wool it be

Wool it be is Oliwia Drozd a Belgium located designer.
A "creative mind" at work.

Her work in felt has an organic simplicity of that which is made by hand yet posseses a quality of design which usually handmade objects and craft lack.

The tactile qualities of the wool are mostly enhanced yet domesticated and loosely and briefly set free a little here and a little there.

The furry and animal hair is colorful and playful as the colors are strikingly strong. The designs are interesting as they are not cold, precise or sleek but organic yet thoughtful and mostly fun.

The things she makes feel, which is what makes them appealing, They feel carefully designed, incorporating chance, improvisation and the craft of a skilled felter willing to experiment.

From hats, and hats with scarves, scarves, to skirts and necklaces and bags of intestine like threads, to vests, to full costumes and dresses to wool selling for roving this all makes wool it be.
http://www.woolitbe.be

Felted Wool Sculptures - Stephanie Metz

Needle felting is mostly a craft making technique; a smaller scale of how industrial wool felt is produced. In industrial production thousands of felting needles mat wool into a flat, uniform and dense fabric. This same technique can be done by hand with one needle creating diferent forms or three-dimensional objects. The technique is labourious and usually one where you are sure to get your fingers pinned over and over by the felting needles which are long, barbed and extremely sharp as to allow the fibers to mix and bond.

Felted Wool sculptures made by needle felting is the latest work of Stephanie Metz, a northern bay californian artist. Her skill at this technique stems out of a talent that has been worked out and developed by practice. Different media have been approached in her training and experience; printmaking, painting (fossil studies, landscape, citylandscape), figure drawing and sculpture.

Teddy Bear Natural History, Overbred Animals and Animal Studies are the titles of these Felted Wool series of works. A certain death smell is presented yet the nature of the material makes it ambigious and contradictory; the senses and the mind get puzzled while confronted with these cozie aberrations of nature.

Danger, mutations and overbreed animals along with teddy bear skulls are portrayed in Metz´s anatomical studies. Wool itself a natural fiber grown from sheep holds some of the mystery of this uneasiness; as abnormal or deformed fauna are created out of animal hair and not a petrified material like marble, stone or bronce. Solid yet pourous and slightly furry these figurative and realistic representations appear as classic anatomical studies and traditional sculptures that while preserving some of the correct proportions and beauty notions challenge those same notions by presenting them in abnormal transformations of excess or lack.

Teddy Bear Natural History confronts the image of childhood and death. Death itself can be played with and understood of as a natural process present even in the imaginary life of a stuffed toy. This particular work shares some lines along with the current japanese boom of deathly but cute dolls and toys but also brings out a relationship with the stuffed animals kept for conservation in museums, getting them so close as to bring out a sense of uneasiness with the teddy bear toys used in everyday life by kids; deprived of their own cycles and treated as petrified animals for play presenting themselves as normality, security and immortality. Metz presents them as bones; the end of their life cycle as petrified stuffed creatures.

While appealing to the senses the pieces confront your tactile instict with the realization of the subjects as freak, awkard and contrary to life. Whether abnormal cycles of nature or genetic mutations produced synthethically one is confronted with natures order of things shifted and therefore our own order of things along with our role and participation within nature.

www.artbysteph.com