Handmade felt has a long, long history. It is thought to stretch right back to our humble beginnings as Neolithic peoples. Making felt by hand in some way connects me to that ancient past. The methods of making felt have remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years, combining soft tufts of animal fibres, warm soapy water, and the physical pressure of the hands or feet, to form a dense robust textile.

The physical process of making felt has fascinated since making my first felts in 1993. Currently I teach workshops and give lectures in all aspects of wet feltmaking. Hats (sculpture for the head), bags, scarves and jewellery forms, continue to provide much scope for the continual exploration of the possibilities of creating new forms in felt.

Felt is an intriguing contemporary sculptural material, with one foot in our primal past and one foot in industrial contemporary society. I endeavour to make artworks that acknowledge both these fields of this textile’s history. Incorporating used objects into my textiles add a further element of familiarity, personal memory, and a sense of human history to the work. The resulting sculptural forms are at once familiar yet strangely unsettling with a steampunk aesthetic.