Frisian Wouw

Claudy Jongstra (born 1963) designs and produces unique felt fabrics for interiors. She works together with architects and clients around the world to create unique pieces for specific spaces and purposes. Each Claudy Jongstra design is a one-of-a-kind object of contemporary design, partly handmade and incorporating traditional craft techniques and innovative skills. Thanks to her innovative technique, Claudy Jongstra designs can be produced in any format and in any colour. The result can be used as a wall hanging, adhered directly to a wall, or it can be used to cover other surfaces, as a tapestry, or as a fabric, for example, to cover space dividers. Jongstra’s fabrics are found in public as well as in private interiors. In addition to their aesthetic enhancement of their environment, adding a softer, more human atmosphere, her fabrics are extremely tactile and serve to improve the acoustics of the space in which they are used. The fabrics are dyed with only natural vegetable ingredients and made from exceptionally high-quality materials, such as the finest Drenthe Heath wool from her own sheep, as well as merino wool, silk, alpaca, and so on. Each design has its own variations in tone and texture, giving it its characteristic visual richness. These fabrics are surprising in their beauty, their daring and their ingenuity. From an article by Lisa White, published in Interior View magazine: “Partly primitive, partly animal, part magic, the felt fabrics of Claudy Jongstra are unique in their rough sophistication. Some seem to come straight from the back of the beast, others are worked with a finesse that makes them a statement in raw elegance. For Jongstra uses only raw materials – raw silk, raw linen, raw camelhair, raw cashmere and especially raw wool – which she treats with original techniques that result in some of the most creative felts ever seen. Felt is her instinctive fabric, one she never tires of reinventing. “Though Jongstra has a fashion background, her deep interest lies in the fabrication of the material itself. Each fabric has its own recipe and Jongstra currently has a repertoire of over 500 recipes. Jongstra even goes so far as to raise her own sheep in the Dutch countryside and currently has a herd of 200 animals, many of which are rare European species, such as the long-haired Drenthe heath, whose shorn locks she often treats along with the straw and lanolin they accumulated on their owners. Keeping her own herd means that she can research the species and treat them particularly well to enhance the quality of the wool.”