The Sheep Lamp grew out of intuitive material experimentation. I had come across a large amount of waste material from an industrial felt processing facility and wanted to make something with it. With this project, I was pushing myself to work intuitively so I avoided assigning a function at first. I had a few ideas - a cape, a lampshade, maybe a vessel. I wanted this to be ambiguous to see what forms I could generate from working this way.
Then I made some samples of fabric and forms by stitching together the new yarn that I had made. I found that the material grew wider as I was mindlessly stitching it in the round.
Is it a lampshade?
The raw material is waste from an industrial felt processing facility. It was originally a wide ribbon of felt that is fed through an automatic die cutter. I made some yardages of yarn by folding and stitching the sides of the ladder-like shape together. The "rungs" of the ladder shape formed U-shaped loops.
A vessel?
I added strips of cut felt near the bottom because I was running out of the loop yarn. The resulting form resembled most like a garment. I then made a simple wire stand to hold up the shape. At this point, the object resembled a lampshade so I went with it and added a light.
Drying on the form with plastic to protect the wood.
Felt and steel seemed too jarring of a combination so I went with a simple bent-laminated wooden structure that follows the shape of the shade. I dipped the shade in a mixture of warm water and fabric stiffener and stretched it over the wooden form to set its shape.
Donzo.