Boundary-pushing bags, brooches and necklaces. Wild hats and mufflers. Cosmological carpets and hangings. All-embracing jackets and coats. Every design unique, crafted from hand-felted wool and the most unexpected fibers.
It has been another busy year for Jorie Johnson. Three exhibitions in Kansai and Kanto. A felt makers' conference in Kyrgyzstan. And from next week, a show in Kyoto's Gallery Nishikawa, with what she calls "a sense for the change of seasons and the brrr of winter to come."
It was weird, therefore, to be talking to her in June, with the heat beating down outside her spacious studio home in Momoyama, Kyoto. "Not the type of weather to be talking felt, let alone wearing it," she jokes, offering a glass of blueberry, banana and coconut juice with crushed ice and fresh mint. Weirder still trying to make sense of my notes all these months later, hugging the heater and dreaming of one of her wonderful coats around my shoulders.