Felt is an ancient material with a low environmental impact and is 100% biodegradable. It is the best natural insulator and has multiple applications, from design to green building.
When it comes to felt, the design icon of reference is the Feltri armchair, designed by Gaetano Pesce in the late 1980s and produced by Cassina. A sort of felt throne, used as a load-bearing structure thanks to a special patented production technique, it evokes archaic imagery and the idea of a primitive way of dwelling. For felt is an ancient material, yet always relevant, and it continues to captivate designers and artists alike.
Felt is obtained through the felting of wool fibres. The material it is made from is carded sheep's wool — that is, wool freed from impurities and combed to align the textile fibres in parallel — used just as it is, without proceeding to the subsequent spinning stage. To produce felt, the fibres are dampened with hot water. They are then soaked in soap and rubbed by hand or with a machine. This process is called "fulling" and consists in compacting the fabric through shrinkage and felting, in order to make it dense.
Boiled wool is similar to felt, but differs in the type of material from which it is obtained. Whereas true felt uses only carded wool, boiled wool is made from wool that has been both carded and spun. Boiled wool fabric is produced by knitting wool yarn and then fulling it, causing it to shrink by up to one third. An entirely different story is hat felt, such as that used for the famous Borsalino hats, which are made from rabbit hair using a special shaping technique.
Felt is said to be the first fabric produced by humankind, second only to the weaving of plant fibres, a craft probably far older than the working of wool. The oldest traces of wool felt date back to the third millennium BC and are found in Siberia. There are also important traces of prehistoric felt in Turkey. It was used by the Greeks and Romans too, for making garments, headwear and cloaks.
According to legend, the invention of felt is attributed to Saint James the Apostle. The saint, who had been a fisherman, found it hard to endure the consequences of the long journeys on foot required by his preaching. To protect the soles of his feet, he tried padding his sandals with the tufts of wool that sheep, as they grazed, left caught on thorny bushes. He noticed that the layer of wool, compressed by his weight and dampened by sweat, hardened and transformed into a compact, soft and comfortable sheet. And so felt was invented. The first guilds of hatmakers regarded the saint as their patron; in iconography he is depicted as a pilgrim wearing a broad-brimmed hat — made of felt, naturally — adorned with a shell.
Among Italian designers, some have chosen felt as their sole material of choice, among them Cristiana Di Nardo who, after studying its techniques in Finland and in Asian countries, has devoted many years to historical, artistic and educational research into felt. She creates tapestries, three-dimensional forms, installations, clothing accessories and furnishing accessories inspired by suggestions drawn from nature, and runs courses to teach how felt is made and worked.
"From wool fibres that are originally separate, light and fragile, through the combined action of various elements — all necessary and all present simultaneously — one obtains a cohesive material that is waterproof, non-tearable, resistant enough to be used as protection against bad weather, fire and weapons," explains the designer. "It is an irreversible process, a material that is born from the most delicate fibre of the gentlest of animals, the sheep, through a process that must follow alternating phases in a precise manner to achieve the best result: it is faster than weaving and plaiting, but it cannot be done well quickly, nor can it be recovered in the event of an error."
Monica Castiglioni, a jewellery designer, recently gave shape to a collection of felt accessories including rugs, bowls, bags, scarves and jewellery called Shades of Felt. Among the many forms of her jewellery, often inspired by nature, the flower pistil stands out as the distinctive element of her art, and it features in the felt collection too.
"From production mistakes," writes Benazir Iskender, a young designer who curated the collection created by Castiglioni and produced by the craftspeople of the Kyrgyz company Tumar, "one can grasp the true beauty of craftsmanship. Or rather, mistakes are the embodiment of the essence of artisanship and produce pieces that have the gift of uniqueness, through the interpretation that the distant felt master of Kyrgyzstan has given to Monica's ideas, drawing on his knowledge of felt and his skill in working with it."
Felt is warm, lightweight and waterproof, and is the best natural insulating material. Highly effective against both cold and heat, it lines the inside and outside of yurts, the mobile dwellings of many nomadic peoples of Asia, including Mongolians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. For the Kyrgyz, the word "tumar" refers to a triangular felt amulet. Worn on the chest, it is believed to protect its owner for many years.
Tumar is also the name of a company based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, that produces felt design objects: established in 1998, the Art Tumar Group aims to preserve and develop the material culture of the people of Kyrgyzstan through the creation and promotion of modern, functional, high-quality craft products based on low-environmental-impact technologies, which renew the image of traditional production techniques. More than 200 craftspeople work felt and fabrics in close collaboration with design studios and designers to create new products that emerge from the exploration of innovative forms and from the combination of different working techniques using natural materials.
