Claudy Jongstra (born 6 February 1963) is a Dutch artist and textile designer.
Jongstra studied fashion design at the Utrecht School of the Arts between 1982 and 1989. Her work is characterized by her use of wool in the form of handcrafted felt. Much of the wool she uses is from Drenthe Heath sheep, which she raises herself in the Northern Netherlands. She often colors the wool with vegetable dyes made from vegetables grown in her own garden. [1]
She is known, in particular, for the unique kinds of hybrid or nuno felts she creates through combining a variety of materials with wool. These combined fibers include silk, linen, and chiffons, as well as fibers from animals such as yak or camel. Her felting process is also distinguished by the multiple stages of reworking required for achieving certain effects. [2]
One of her early major assignments involved working on the fabrics for the Jedi costumes in Star Wars Episode 1. [3] She also produced fabrics for fashion and furniture designers, including Alexander van Slobbe, Maarten Baas, Hella Jongerius, John Galliano, Christian Lacroix and Donna Karan. [4] Later in her career, Jongstra started creating large-scale works of art, displayed at museums such as the Fries Museum, the Provinciehuis in Leeuwarden, the Amsterdam Public Library and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. [5]
In 2009, her work was selected for inclusion in "Fashioning Felt", an international show on felt sponsored by the Smithsonian, which was exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. [6]
The work of Claudy Jongstra is included in various museum collections, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other animals, including cashmere and mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, hide and fur clothing from bison, angora from rabbits, and other types of wool from camelids.
Felt is a textile material that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers together. Felt can be made of natural fibers such as wool or animal fur, or from synthetic fibers such as petroleum-based acrylic or acrylonitrile or wood pulp-based rayon. Blended fibers are also common. Felt has special properties that allow it to be used for a wide variety of purposes. "It is fire-retardant and self-extinguishing; it dampens vibration and absorbs sound; and it can hold large amounts of fluid without feeling wet..."
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum located in the Upper East Side's Museum Mile in Manhattan, New York City. It is one of 19 museums that fall under the wing of the Smithsonian Institution and is one of three Smithsonian facilities located in New York City, the other two being the George Gustav Heye Center in Bowling Green and the Archives of American Art New York Research Center in the Flatiron District. It is the only museum in the United States devoted to historical and contemporary design. Its collections and exhibitions explore approximately 240 years of design aesthetic and creativity.
Fiber art refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as part of the works' significance, and prioritizes aesthetic value over utility.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861–1875) was a furnishings and decorative arts manufacturer and retailer founded by the artist and designer William Morris with friends from the Pre-Raphaelites. With its successor Morris & Co. (1875–1940) the firm's medieval-inspired aesthetic and respect for hand-craftsmanship and traditional textile arts had a profound influence on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century.
Claire Zeisler was an American fiber artist who expanded the expressive qualities of knotted and braided threads, pioneering large-scale freestanding sculptures in this medium. Throughout her career Zeisler sought to create "large, strong, single images" with fiber. Zeisler's non-functional structures were constructed using traditional weaving and avant-garde off the loom techniques such as square knotting, wrapping, and stitching. Zeisler preferred to work with natural materials such as jute, sisal, raffia, hemp, wool, and leather. The textiles were often left un-dyed, evidence of Zeisler's preference for natural coloration that emphasized the fiber itself. When she used color, however, Zeisler gravitated towards red.
Mary Walker Phillips was an American textile artist, author and teacher. She revolutionized the craft of hand knitting by exploring knitting as an independent art form. In the catalog to her 1984 Fresno Arts Center exhibition, Jack Lenor Larsen described Phillips as the "transition between the old-fashioned, pattern-book knitting and the extraordinary things going on in England and America today." Her hand-knit tapestries and other creative pieces are exhibited in museums in the U.S. and Europe.
Andrea Valentini is an American designer based in Rhode Island who is known for her bags.
Isabel Toledo was a Cuban-American fashion designer based in New York City. She was widely recognized in the fashion industry for her attention to craftsmanship and the "sophisticated simplicity" of her garments.
Dorothy Wright Liebes was an American textile designer and weaver renowned for her innovative, custom-designed modern fabrics for architects and interior designers. She was known as "the mother of modern weaving".
Iris van Herpen is a Dutch fashion designer known for fusing technology with traditional haute couture craftsmanship. Van Herpen opened her own label Iris van Herpen in 2007. In 2011, the Dutch designer became a guest-member of the Parisian Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, part of the Fédération française de la couture. Since then, Van Herpen has continuously exhibited her new collections at Paris Fashion Week. Van Herpen's work has been included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Trude Guermonprez, born Gertrud Emilie Jalowetz, was a German-born American textile artist, designer and educator, known for her tapestry landscapes. Her Bauhaus-influenced disciplined abstraction for hand woven textiles greatly contributed to the American craft and fiber art movements of the 1950s, 60s and even into the 70s, particularly during her tenure at the California College of Arts and Crafts.
Christien Meindertsma is a Dutch artist and designer.
Berend Strik is a Dutch visual artist working and living in Amsterdam.
Marianne Strengell was an influential Finnish-American Modernist textile designer in the twentieth century. Strengell was a professor at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1942, and served as department head from 1942 to 1962. She was able to translate hand-woven patterns for mechanized production, and pioneered the use of synthetic fibers.
Yak fiber is the term commonly used to refer yak fiber wool produced from the coat hair of yaks, a long-haired bovine mainly found in the Himalayan region, Tibetan plateau, and some areas of Mongolia and Central Asia.
Josefine Pola Stout was an American designer best known for creating fine woolen fabrics. Born in Stryj, she studied with Josef Hoffmann at the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Vienna, and designed for the Wiener Werkstätte before she immigrated to the United States in 1925 with her first husband, architect and designer Wolfgang Hoffmann. Wolfgang and Pola Hoffmann became a prominent interior design team that contributed to the development of American modernism in the early 20th century. They dissolved their successful partnership in 1932, when she married popular mystery author Rex Stout. Pola Stout was an influential textile designer after her second marriage. She was executor of Rex Stout's literary estate after her husband's death in 1975.
Nell Znamierowski is an American textile artist.
Lili Blumenau (1912–1976) was an American fiber artist. She was a pivotal figure in the development of fiber arts and textile arts, particularly weaving, in the United States during the mid-part of the 20th century.
Evelyn Anselevicius (1923–2003) was an American textile artist best known for her large-scale, geometric woven tapestries, often created using Mexican techniques and traditions.