Material Knowledge + Aestetics = Feel for Felt
Feel for Felt. Woolen stories for everyday.
Vera Frederiksen Zhotkevich is a felt-maker and a textile artist, living in Sweden and working with material from the nature. She create work of artistic features inspired by the barren Nordic nature, its harsh beauty and the affluence of impressions that you get from it, resulting in individualised textile items. She’s both designer and maker and work after Arts and Crafts-principles. Her company VeraZ works with design and manufacturing of unique textile items.
Felting provides amazing opportunities yielded by both delicate garments and unique decorative pieces for interior design. The concept is to merge the craft, the modern lifestyle, the aesthetic and the advantages in the material itself. The felted articles all employ the characteristic wool qualities from different breeds. VeraZ combines the focus of Swedish new wool with selected recycled textiles.
Most objects are bespoke/one of a kind where wool and woven fabrics merge both in texture and pigmentation. Vera make things for everyday use with a little fairy-tale within every product and she loves to convey the feeling of being well grounded, roots to keep tight to what is loved most – the feelings that you get when being embraced by natures deep and beauty.
In her felt-art Vera mostly use wool from Swedish sheep and alpacas, but also other kinds of wool from controlled origins. If she uses fabric for nunofelting she choose primarily reused/redeployed fabrics. Vera dye the textile either with biodegradable acid-dyes or with plants from her own garden and surroundings. She makes a slow dying according to time and let the natural processes take the time needed. Vera believe in creating things in a slow way with an idea and a feeling that they will stay put for a long time and carry on a story within from one generation to another.
