Felt at ICFF

• By: Susan Brown
• | Monday May 18, 2009
• | 4 Comment(s)

Felt had a very strong presence at ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) this weekend.

I was delighted to see that Lerival – Furniture by Architects is carrying Morehead & Morehead’s brilliant Felt Stool (1). This is currently produced in synthetic automotive felt, which is the only reason I didn’t include it in Fashioning Felt. Otherwise its simple folded form says, in brief, everything I love about felt.

A completely hand-made seating alternative was presented by the Los Angeles-based Mexican designer Tanya Aguiñiga, with her Soft Rocks furnishing pieces (2). Colorful wools are felted and wrapped around high-density foam. She also makes these great chairs of wool felted over found metal folding chairs (3).

Gräf & Lantz, known for an impressive array of wine-related felt accessories (4), are introducing a new line of home furnishings made from Swiss wool (5). In Switzerland, sheep are kept as diary producers, and their coarse wool, considered unsuitable for textiles, was formerly discarded. The wool is now gathered by a socially and environmentally-minded non-profit organization. The sheep, and the felt, come in two natural, un-dyed shades: creamy white and a rich brown, which comes from the rare “black” sheep, making this product available in strictly limited quantities.

The sculptural wall panels by Anne Kyyrö Quinn grow more eye-catching each year. Made from cleverly cut, twisted, folded and stitches strips strips of wool felt, these visually dynamic wall treatments also provide acoustic benefits (6).

ABR of Barcelona took a modular approach with their Feel-Thru room dividers (7). A series of water-jet cut felt panels suspended from a ceiling track and connected to one another with magnets can be pushed aside like a curtain, yet give a much more wall-like solidity. Available in black or white in two different cut-out patterns, the panels give the elegant play of light and shade of carved grille work, but with the softness, flexibility, and sound absorbing qualities of wool felt.

8.

There were fewer felt carpets than in years past, but the Design Deutschland 09 booth showed this charming Stamp carpet by Hey-Sign (9). Peter Van Tuyl proposed a DIY carpet installation, designed by Rosemary Mifsud, which you compose yourself from a group of leafy felt forms (8).

MIO showed their wonderfully green felt bowls and lamps, produced by a local Philadelphia-based hat-maker, one of the last in the US (10). Berin LLC, the US distributor for The Slice, by Lene Frantzen, had a particularly tempting display of those colorful favorites.

Finally, if you are looking for a supplier of German-made, 100% wool felt, Boston-based FilzFelt carries a range of colors and thicknesses (11), along with a line of simple die-cut accessories for the home.