LOCAL WOOL
The collected vintage fabrics we work with act as a live link with the real and imagined roots we all have with the past. Usually coming from monasteries or old dowry chests, they were reproduced in collaboration with a family farm in the Epirus region: the farmers gather surplus wool from their animals for us, before weaving it on an electronic loom and felting it traditionally in the natural water beds of Epirus. The initial raw, thick, dense cloth has since been transformed ensuring its continuity into the future.
WEAVING AND FELTING
The process of weaving and felting was a community effort: shearing the animals, spinning thread, hand-weaving. The weaving was done in narrow looms no wider than 130 cm, which meant the weaver would need to then stitch together two, three or four separate segments to create a length of material to work with. To generate the thick, dense, waterproof quality of felted wool, the length of fabric would be washed in the river and stone pools, soaked for lengthy periods, then beaten during the rains to produce its final structure and left to freely expand.