Joseph Beuys - Infiltration for Piano 1966 / The Skin 1984

"... everything in the scale in the possibilities is involved from noise to concept,the sound of the piano is trapped. The piano is an instrument to produce sound, when not in use is silent but still has sound potential. When no sound is possible the piano is condemned to silence.

The relationship to the human position is the red crosses of emergency, if we remain silent. We fail to make the next evolution step.

Such an object is intended as a stimulus for discussion and in no way is to be taken as an aesthetic product it is vital that human kind should slowly learn to speak.

Everything must be expressed, negatives even those beyond language."      Joseph Beuys

http://www.ubu.com/film/beuys_transformer.html  (min 40)

Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986), Infiltration homogen für Konzertflügel (Homogeneous Infiltration for Piano), 1966, piano covered with felt and leather, 100 x 152 x 240 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.     

 

Joseph Beuys, Die Haut (The Skin), 1984, felt and leather, 100 x 152 x 240 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.  

  

FELT by Willow Mullins

From nomads' tents to poodle skirts, from car parts to Christmas tree ornaments, felt is one of the world's oldest and most understated textiles. Felt has developed simultaneously in multiple cultures, and often its origins are lost. However, far from having been supplanted by new fabrics, not only has felt retained its traditional uses among peoples around the world, but it has also seen a revival of popularity among today's hand feltmakers, craftspeople and fashion designers. This book follows the journey of felt through time, space, and purpose by pulling into focus a series of snapshots of different felting traditions.

Beautifully illustrated, Felt covers the wide-ranging history and development of this most unassuming but ubiquitous of fabrics from the earliest archaeological evidence in the mountains of Siberia to the groundbreaking works of contemporary fiber arts and sculptors.

About the author

Willow G. Mullins received her BA in Folklore from Brown University and her MS in Textile History and Conservation from the University of Rhode Island. She has worked as a textile conservator, and is now working on her PhD in Folklore at the University of Missouri, Columbia with an emphasis on material and visual culture and postcolonial theory. Her current research interests include the embodiment and representation of personal and cultural identities, intercultural interaction, and the ethics of representation and global aid.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 – The History of Felt
Chapter 2 – The Making of Felt
Chapter 3 – Felt in Central Asia
Chapter 4 – Felt in the Middle East, Turkey and Hungary
Chapter 5 – Felt in Europe
Chapter 6 – Felt in Western Art
Chapter 7 – Felt Everywhere
Chapter 8 – The Meanings of Felt
Bibliography

Helene Picard

On paintings and costumes that is the work of Helene Picard. Her strokes seem to be those of the fabrics which themselves contrast highly for their statical apparition when not worn, when hanging there empty of their characters and live elements. Her connection with one and the other seems to be that of movement, when stroke is blurred the fabric, the costume, the dress is there hiding behind in speed.
The felt costumes are those characters of a tale maybe from her exhibition "Hybrid Beings" , "Costume for a coleopterous", "Costume for a horse" and modular Costume. As empty skins and motion as background; one has to become the missing element or wondering where is it a coleopterous that big that fits the suit.
Empty skins of a bestiary, how wonderful and they all fit your size.

www.helenepicard.com

Felt process on Fashioning Felt (Turkmenistan)

Interesting images have been posted at the Fashioning Felt blog on the process of making felt.
The images have been taken in 2008 in Turkmenistan showing one of the oldest procedures on how to make felt rugs with moisture, heat, friction by wrapping the wool like if it was sushi and striking it repeatedly. The images talk for themselves, for now we will only post a link.

Photos by Christine Martens 

Fulbright Scholar Christine Martens Shares Photographs of Feltmaking Processes

During the month of June, American Fulbright Scholar Christine Martens met with artisans across Uzbekistan to talk about felt making. 


http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/process

M + K Filze Factory GmbH by m+k

As a specialist for technical felts we develop and produce customised products based on woolfelt, needle felt and needle fleece in small series and hight volumes for all branches and application areas.

In addition we offer hight-quality color & designer felts based on 100% new wool in plenty of brilliant colours and realise individual concepts of architects and interior decorators for upscaled living- and interior ambiance, promt and flexible.

There is hardly any other group of materials that has such a wide range of properties and applications as felt. Unnoticed by most users, wool and needle felt is a major factor in the operability and convenience of many devices, machines and vehicles.The enormous variability of appication is the result of the diverse capabilities and properties of this material.

Anyone who believes that felt is primarily used for hats and slippers is mistaken. There is hardly any other group of materials that has such a wide range of properties and applications as felt.

Unnoticed by most users, wool and needle felt is a major factor in the operability and convenience of many devices, machines and vehicles.The enormous variability of appication is the result of the diverse capabilities and properties of this material.

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For instance its hardness can ve varied between “wadding softness to hammer hardness”. It can be supplied in virtually any shape and colour, and can be made to be flame resistant, self-adhesive, slip-proof and hydrophilic as well as many other properties. Various processes can combine felt with fabrics, foams, films and other components.

www.filzfabrik.de

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to Present “Fashioning Felt” by 7th space

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will present the exhibition “Fashioning Felt,” a comprehensive overview of the varied uses of felt in contemporary design, in the first-floor galleries from March 6 through Sept. 7, 2009. The exhibition will feature more than 70 felt works from a range of fields, including fashion, architecture, product design and home furnishings.



Organized by Susan Brown, assistant curator in the Textiles Department, the exhibition will begin with historic examples of felts, showcase innovations in handmade felts, present the issue of sustainability through the re-use of waste wool and felt and explore the recent adoption of felt by a wide variety of architects and designers, from Gaetano Pesce to Tom Dixon.

A highlight of the exhibition will be site-specific installations by two of today’s leading hand-felters, Janice Arnold and Claudy Jongstra, who create an incredible range of surface textures through the inclusion of wool from sheep with different coat qualities and experimentation with natural dyestuffs and other techniques, such as felting through silk. At Cooper-Hewitt, Arnold will create a palace yurt, inspired by the traditional dwelling of the tribal leader, in the museum’s conservatory. The yurt will have a ceremonial entrance, and the surrounding glass walls and ceiling of the conservatory will be draped in a soft, felted material of Arnold’s creation. For the exhibition, Jongstra, a Dutch designer, will create two distinct semicircular environments out of her renowned handcrafted, long-haired felt, made with wool shorn from her own herd of sheep.

“Felt has played an important role in nomadic cultures for millennia and this exhibition will explore its origins and bring the material fully up to the present,” said Director Paul Warwick Thompson. “By examining both the conventional and nontraditional uses of felt over time, the exhibition will spotlight its unique characteristics and provide an extensive look at this ancient material with modern appeal.”

Made from a renewable resource, the manufacturing of felt is low-impact and virtually waste-free; it is made simply by matting together wool fibers with humidity and friction. The methods of matting felt vary widely, from handmade versions created by violently slamming a fleece roll against the ground to industrial felt produced by mechanically rubbing together wool fibers, but all involve extreme agitation and pressure in order to compact and shrink the felt.

Unlike other fabrics made from wool, which are built up stitch by stitch and row by row through practices such as knitting and weaving, felt has no internal structure. The manufacturing process is readily customizable, and the finished product has a versatility rarely found in other materials—it can be made flexible and translucent or very dense and hard; it can be cut without fraying and molded into three-dimensional forms. Felt also provides protection against extremes of temperature and is naturally water repellant, windproof and fire retardant.

Known since at least the Neolithic period (9000 B.C.), felt is believed to be the first man-made cloth. It was the single most significant material for the nomadic tribes of Central Asia and was used to make everything from clothing to the flexible, collapsible dwellings known as yurts. To illustrate the diverse uses of the material, as well as the continuity of the felt-making technique throughout history, the exhibition will feature animal trappings, carpets and shepherds’ cloaks.

As a raw material, felt offers endless possibilities for designers today. The past 15 years have been a period of intensive experimentation and innovation in the craft, and the use of felt has expanded outside of traditional areas to include everything from fashion accessories and costume design to architecture, home furnishings and product design.

Fashion designers such as Yeohlee Teng and Christine Birkel have embraced felt as a material because it can be manipulated into three-dimensional forms, while still maintaining a soft, textile-like surface. On view in the exhibition will be seamless dresses from artist Andrea Zittel’s “A-Z Personal Uniform Series,” which are formed directly from fiber in three-dimensions, with all color, shape and ornament being executed in the felt-making process; as well as works by Birkel, who creates forms organically by felting through sheer, lightweight fabrics and controlling shrinkage to create necklines, armholes and waists in a process known as nuno felting, rather than constructing garments using traditional dressmaker techniques such as darts, pleats and gathering.

In furniture design, textiles are typically relegated to use solely as upholstery, but a dense felt can be firm enough to provide support and structure, while maintaining soft surface qualities. Highlights of the works on view in this area include Søren Ulrick Petersen’s “Swing Low” cradle, whose cocoon-like shape muffles noise and keeps out drafts; Louise Campbell’s origami-like “Bless You” chair; and Pesce’s “Feltri” chair, wherein the back and arms of the chair take shape entirely from the thick, sculptural quality of the felt.

Industrial felt has emerged as a popular construction material in recent years due to its performative qualities of thermal protection, vibration absorption and sound damping, which make it ideal for use as acoustic tiles and wall and floor coverings. The exhibition will spotlight a number of innovative works in this area, including Tord Boontje’s “Little Field of Flowers” carpet, in which six different leaf shapes are die-cut from felt and loomed into a woven carpet, and LAMA Concept’s “Cell LED” carpet, which features LEDs inserted behind the felt nodes in the carpet to provide a long-lasting, low-energy and visually pleasing light source.

The exhibition also will address the issue of sustainability, featuring felts made from partially or fully recycled materials. Felt makes a very short trajectory from raw fiber to finished product, creating fewer opportunities for material waste, and with the burgeoning interest in green design, this most primitive textile is emerging as an exciting “new” material. Among the works on view that are created from recycled materials are Odegard’s “Striped Felt” carpet, which is created by embroidering together the waste from various solid-color, cut-edge felt carpets, and Molo’s “Felt Rocks,” a by-product of a process for hardening high-density industrial felts.

The final gallery of the exhibition will feature videos that document the felt-making process, as well as a variety of touch samples.

http://cooperhewitt.org/EXHIBITIONS/Fashioning-Felt/

Angelika Klose Hats

Angelika´s hats are constructed from flat materials a difference from those formed in the traditional way of hat making.

Her range of materials is varied from fabrics, ribbons or cords made from cotton, silk, wool, sinamay, plastic, fake fur and woven steel thread.

Experimentation with the materials, as well as skill and respect for the craft make her work have a unique quality. Her designs and solutions are multiple, beautiful and very honest; letting the material speak for itself.

From the small quantities to the one off a kind pieces. Klose´s hats are simple, yet the designs are smart, intuitive and without excess.

Each hat embodies an untold story; it unfolds, maybe in imaginary tales.

Angelika Klose, was born in Germany, works in the UK and has been making costumes for the last five years for the Shakespear Festival at the Rosenburg Castle in Austria.

www.angeli-k-hutdesign.de

Claudia Schulz Hats

Felt has been used forever to make hats, as it can be molded and shaped by using moisture, heat and pressure; nothing new in the horizon.

The mad hatter we see, we would like a little madder, a little bolder.

Black Clutch Bag & Hat stands out from the rest of the work, maybe so as it is a bag and not a hat and an interesting piece that makes the most of the material and also can be used as a hat.

Schulz inspiration was taken from the 20´s she states, the designs get overcrowded with ornaments and buttons, yet the formula remains mostly unchanged (except in Robin and Black Clutch Bag & Hat)

The shape is beautiful and its the most simple one, for Schulz it is the contour or profile of the pieces where the hatter tries to make the difference. Though not completeley sure that is enough.

The connection with the material and the historical connection is unknown. Is it just a matter of shape and form? then our answers are incomplete and our project a mere formal exercise.

The Robyn hat an interesting piece yet conventional, the craft is all but fine but the details could improve the quality of the whole.

As for the reference well Robin Hood is a legend that can be found as early as the 15th or 16th century so bit to early for the 20´s; unless its Douglas Fairbanks, in which case why not Dártagnan.

Images work even if the design or the concept is not that strong. Attitude is there. And well, one needs attitude in order to wear a hat.

www.claudiaschulz.com

On Felt

Background

Most fabrics are woven, meaning they are constructed on a loom and have interlocking warp (the thread or fiber that is strung lengthwise on the loom) and weft (the thread that cuts across the warp fiber andinterlocks with it) fibers that create a flat piece of fabric. Felt is a dense, non-woven fabric and without any warp or weft. Instead, felted fabric is made from matted and compressed fibers or fur with no apparent system of threads. Felt is produced as these fibers and/or fur are pressed together using heat, moisture, and pressure. Felt is generally composed of wool that is mixed with a synthetic in order to create sturdy, resilient felt for craft or industrial use. However, some felt is made wholly from synthetic fibers.

Felt may vary in width, length, color, or thickness depending on its intended application. This matted material is particularly useful for padding and lining as it is dense and can be very thick. Furthermore, since the fabric is not woven the edges may be cut without fear of threads becoming loose and the fiber unraveling. Felted fibers generally take dye well and craft felt is available in a multitude of colors while industrial-grade felt is generally left in its natural state. In fact, felt is used in a wide variety of applications both within the residential and industrial contexts. Felt is used in air fresheners, children's bulletin boards, craft kits, holiday costumes and decorations, stamp pads, within appliances, gaskets, as a clothing stiffener or liner, and it can be used as a cushion, to provide pads for polishing apparatus, or as a sealant in industrial machinery.

History

Felt may be the oldest fabric known to man, and there are many references to felt in ancient writings. Since felt is not woven and does not require a loom for its production, ancient man made it rather easily. Some of the earliest felt remains were found in the frozen tombs of nomadic horsemen in the Siberian Tlai mountains and date to around 700 B.C. These tribes made clothing, saddles, and tents from felt because it was strong and resistant to wet and snowy weather. Legend has it that during the Middle Ages St. Clement, who was to become the fourth bishop of Rome, was a wandering monk who happened upon the process of making felt by accident. It is said he stuffed his sandals with tow (shortflax or linen fibers) in order to make them more comfortable. St. Clement discovered that the combination of moisture from perspiration and ground dampness coupled with pressure from his feet matted these tow fibers together and produced a cloth. After becoming bishop he set up groups of workers to develop felting operations. St. Clement became the patron saint for hat makers, who extensively utilize felt to this day.

Today, hats are associated with felt, but it is generally presumed that all felt is made of wool. Originally, early hat-making felt was produced using animal fur (generally beaver fur). The fur was matted with other fibers—including wool—using heat, pressure, and moisture. The finest hats were of beaver, and men's fine hats were often referred to as beavers. Beaver felt hats were made in the late Middle Ages and were much coveted. However, by the end of the fourteenth century many hat makers produced them in the Low Countries thus driving down the price.

The North American continent was home to many of the beaver skins used in European hat makers' creations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. North American Indians' second-hand skins,replete with perspiration, felted most successfully and were in extraordinary demand for hat making in both the New and Old Worlds. The beaver hat was surpassed in popularity in the second half of the nineteenth century by the black silk hat, sometimes finished to resemble beaver and referred to as beaver-finished silk.

The steps included in making felt have changed little over time. Felted fabric is produced using heat, moisture, and pressure to mat and interlock the fibers. In the Middle Ages the hat maker separated the fur from the hide by hand and applied pressure and warm water to the fabric to shrink it manually. While machinery is used today to accomplish many of these tasks, the processing requirements remain unchanged. One exception is that until the late nineteenth century mercury was used in the processing of felt for hat making. Mercury was discovered to have debilitating effects on the hatter causing a type of poisoning that led to tremors, hallucinations, and other psychotic symptoms. The term mad hatter is associated with the hat maker because of the psychosis that stemmed from the mercury poisoning. Hats of wool felt remain quite popular and are primarily worn in the winter months.

The use of felt has enlarged over the past century. Crafts enthusiasts use it for all types of projects. Many teachers find it to be an easy fabric for children to handle because once it is cut the edges do notunravel as do woven fabrics. Industrial applications for felt have burgeoned, and felt is found in cars as well as production machinery.

Raw Materials

Felt is produced from wool, which grips and mats easily, and a synthetic fiber that gives the felt someresilience and longevity. Typical fiber combinations for felt include wool and polyester or wool andnylon. Synthetics cannot be turned into felt by themselves but can be felted if they combine with wool.

Other raw materials used in the production of wool include steam, utilized during the stage in which the material is reduced in width and length and made thicker. Also, a weak sulfuric acid mixture is used in the thickening process. Soda ash (sodium chloride) is utilized to neutralize the sulfuric acid.

The Manufacturing

Process

1. Since some felts use more than one type of fiber, the fibers must be mixed and blended together before any processing begins. To do this, the raw fibers are put into an opener with a big cylinder studded with steel nails that combine the fibers into a mass.
2. Next, these blended fibers must be carded. Carding machines are huge cylinders that mat the fibers into a web. Hopper-feeders allow a specific weight of fiber to pass into the cylinder in order to create a standardized web. The fibers in the web are pulled by the wires, or carded, so that they are parallel to one another.
3. Generally, at least two carding machines are used in the manufacturing process, each refining the web as it creates a new one. A transporter moves one web from the first carding machine to a second. The web is then fed into the second machine. This second carder generates a new web that is thicker and fully carded.
4. At the end of the second carding, a comb removes the carded web from the machine and rolls it up. There are two ways to remove the web from the machine: a cross-lapper may be used in which the web is perpendicularly rolled up, or across the direction of the fibers; or a vlamir may be utilized, in which the web is rolled parallel to the direction of the fibers.
5. Next, several different webs are combined to create one thick web. Four rolls of web are rolled up but are layered so that their fibers alternate in direction based on the way the webs were rolled, either cross-lapped or rolled using a vlamir. These four rolls are considered a standard single roll, sometimes referred to as a batt. This batt is considered a standard roll of material. Batts are layered in order to create different thicknesses of felt.
6. The batts of felted material must be hardened or matted together in order to create thick, densely-felted material. The first step in this process is subjecting the batts to heat and moisture. In order to do so, the batts are passed through a steam table.
7. Now, the separate batts must be matted together and shrunk in length and width in order to create a dense felt. These batts must be subjected to heat, moisture, and pressure in order to be matted densely. First, the wetted batts are fed into a plate-hardener that shrinks the width of the fabric. The plate-hardener consists of a large, square flat bed with a large plate that drops down over the batts of wet, hot batts, exerting pressure on the material and compressing it. At the same time, the plate-hardener oscillates from edge to edge, further matting the fiber to a specific width.
8. Next, the batts are fed into a fuller or fulling machine, which shrinks the length to a specific measurement. As it shrinks, the felt becomes more dense. The batts are fed through a set of upper and lower steel rollers that are covered with hard rubber or plastic and are molded with treads much like a car tire, enabling them to move across the batts. The felt is continuously wetted with a hot water and sulfuric-acid solution. The upper rollers remain stationary as the lower rollers are moved upwards to put pressure on the fabric and push it against the upper rollers. All of the rollers, both upper and lower, move together forward and backward. The pressure, the acid, the hot water, and the movement causes the batts to shrink in length, making the felt even more dense. For example, a single piece of felt that is 38 yd (34.7 m) long may come out of the fuller at only 30 yd (27.4 m) in length.
9. The wet felt has sulfuric acid residue and must be neutralized. To do so, the felt is run through neutralizing tanks filled with a soda ash and warm water solution. This process is carefully timed so that specific yard lengths and widths are in for an exact amount of time.
10. The neutralized felt is then run through a re fulling machine in which heavy rollers run over the surface of the fabric one last time to smooth out any irregularities.
11. If felts are to be dyed, the wet pieces are taken to a dye vat. Some industrial grades are not dyed but go directly to drying.
12. Some companies simply roll up the wet felt and send it to a centrifugal dryer that spins out the water. Others have huge dryers in which the felt is pinned in place on a dryer bed. Felt can also be open-air dried by either being hung or stretched out on a floor in a drying room.
13. Once dry, some companies press or iron the felt to ensure consistent thickness. Some manufacturers use this ironing to make dense felts even more dense as ironing can shrink it slightly.
14. The finishing step includes placing the felt on a gaging table in which the edges of the felt are neatly trimmed. The piece is now ready for packing, labeling, and shipping.

http://www.answers.com/topic/felt

FELT

felt1 (fĕlt)
n.
1.
1. A fabric of matted, compressed animal fibers, such as wool or fur, sometimes mixed with vegetable or synthetic fibers.
2. A material resembling this fabric.
2. Something made of this fabric.

adj.
Made of, relating to, or resembling felt.

v., felt·ed, felt·ing, felts.v.tr.
1. To make into felt.
2. To cover with felt.
3. To press or mat (something) together.

v.intr.
To become like felt; mat together.

felty felt'y adj.
felt2 (fĕlt)
v.
Past tense and past participle of feel.