I am often contacted by visitors who would like to buy dolls they have seen in the picture galleries. But all of these dolls have been made as part of projects or have been pre-ordered a long time before they were made. Due to lack of time I only make a very limited number of dolls each year, but I have decided to make some of these dolls available on Feltmaking.com as “Doll of the month”.
This month I have chosen a special thing that has had a long life and now I have given it to the nature to see what will happen to it there. That means that it is not for sale.
As you can see it is a felted chair. I made it many years ago for an exhibition I was invited to when there was a big international doll theatre festival in Copenhagen. I wanted to personify this chair so it could be a part of this theatre festival. I imagined that it could be seen as alive in many ways so wherever you look at it there will be living parts.
I started to prepare all the wool directly from the sheep and a friend who is actor at a doll theatre group, helped me to pack and wet-felt the body of the chair and that way she learned how to felt . Then I made all the faces that are making it alive, while she made the food. The arm was added and the long felted ropes.
The chair can be seen from the front and there it is like sitting a person. If you then look at it from the back side you will see that it turns to be an animal with four legs and big horns (the backrest). The head on one of the legs live its own life and the little heads at the top of the backrest are to be seen as the same kind as architects decorate buildings with.
My chair has been a kind of distinctive mark for me in many connections. It has been at several exhibitions and events and in between it has been a part of my workshop that people always commented and especially children love it.
During the years it has lost much of the original natural color that faded in the sun and at last I had to decide that I should do something else with it. I have made several felt in nature events in Norway and Denmark where we made felt in the nature and let it stay there and grow together with the nature, so I found that it would be the very best way for the chair to end its life. I simply placed it in my allotment-garden and I really love to see it there. It looks so perfect together with our sculptural bushes.
And what has happened to it? Now it has been standing there for several months and it is still “alive”.
Love it, your chair is so whimsical.
What I have worked with during this summer.
I am currently adding a lot of new picture galleries. Some of the galleries are pictures of previous dolls of the month.