The Felt-Makers
(Sheep for felt, goats for cashmere.)
Yesterday I went down to a big Lutheran church in Santa Monica to a talk and slide show about how the various nomadic tribes of Central Asia make felt. I’m not a felt-maker, but it does look like it would be fun to try. Felt happens when sheeps’ wool is heated and then pressed and subjected to friction. The combination of shrinking and kinking makes it form a dense mat. You spread sheep’s wool out on a sheet of stiff fabric, then sprinkle boiling hot water on it, and then you roll it up. You can make felt from camel hair, too, but not from goat hair.
The speaker was Dr. Stephanie Bunn, an anthropologist who has spent many years living in Kyrgyzstan studying how they make textiles. (She’s one of those people who exemplifies the saying, “Do what you love and love what you do!”) She said the first felt was probably made by accident: it’s not unusual among shepherding people to stuff some loose fleece into their boots in the winter for warmth. Put on the boot, tramp around in the snow for a couple of days, and, presto, you’ve made felt!
If you’re making large pieces of felt as the nomads did, you need many hands for beating the fleece (to fluff it up), laying it out, and rolling it up. Then comes the fun part: you have to find a way to create enough friction to integrate the strands of wool. Dr. Bunn showed us pictures of women lined up on their knees, pressing down on their forearms with all their body weight, on a long roll of fleece. In another shot, a group of men were tramping on a roll with heavy boots. There’s a video online at that shows a Kyrgyz woman teaching a group of tourists to dance on the rolled fleece, as they use to in old days. In any case, you’d need to call your neighbors and relatives to come over for a felt-making party, sort of like quilting bees and barn-raising in colonial America.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHEW6orYPK8
Mongolians still use a thick layer of felt for their ger (yurt) walls and roofs. It does a good job of insulating and keeping out the cold. On our trip to Mongolia we saw big rolls of felt for sale in the open markets, and we saw it rolled up and piled in a truck for the seasonal move. But nowadays it’s made in felt factories.
I wonder if people miss getting together for felt-making. Or have the rural people substituted some new event: the day the children arrive in town to live in the school dormitory? Graduation day? Election day? Rural inoculation programs? Sheep-shearing? Still, there’s something special about working on a project together, followed by a potluck meal for all the helpers and their families.
A video about felt making in Kyrgyzstan, with photos of their beautiful colors and designs:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO2VxDmy4y4
A video about old-fashioned felt-making in Mongolia, from catching the sheep to wrapping the get:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=674RZRDLg6U
