We first took notice of Vera Alexandrova’s work when we began developing our Felt Diffuser. We were looking for a material that could hold fragrance well and release it gradually—without an intense initial burst or the need to constantly flip, spray, or otherwise refresh it. That search led us to wool. And as we started learning more about the material itself, we came across Vera’s work. After that, we didn’t feel the need to keep looking.
Her hand-felted wall pieces and rugs look nothing like factory-made textiles. They are dimensional, almost sculptural in places, and you can really see the material itself—its density, its irregularities, the way it takes shape. Vera has been working with wool for more than ten years. Each piece exists as a one-of-a-kind work, not because it is deliberately made to look “handmade,” but because creating the exact same piece twice simply isn’t possible.
The basic principle of felting has changed very little over thousands of years. Wool, water, heat, pressure—the fibers gradually bind together and become a dense textile. The technique existed long before modern textile manufacturing, and in many ways, today’s makers are still working with the same physical properties of the material.
For Vera, it didn’t begin with a plan to become a felt artist.
“It was more of a coincidence that very quickly became a big part of my life. I trained as a fashion designer, so I had always worked with textiles, but wool introduced me to a completely different way of working with material. What struck me immediately about felting was that you literally create the fabric with your own hands—you’re not cutting from an existing textile or sewing pieces together. You start with individual fibers and gradually build them into a form. At first, I was simply curious and wanted to understand what the material was capable of. Then I realized that its possibilities were practically endless. That’s how it became something I’ve now been doing for many years.”
From the outside, the process looks fairly simple. With moisture, heat, and friction, wool fibers gradually bind together—without thread, seams, or an additional backing. But the result isn’t always entirely predictable. Wool shrinks, it can stretch more in one direction than another, and it responds differently depending on the thickness and density of the fiber layout. So rather than simply following a predetermined formula, the maker has to watch what the material is doing and adjust along the way.
Vera says that unpredictability is precisely what she enjoys about working with wool:
“I think that’s exactly what I especially love about working with wool. I always have an idea and a sense of where I want the work to go, but wool never behaves in a completely mechanical way. Everything affects the result: the thickness of the layout, the direction of the fibers, the amount of water, the degree of shrinkage, the different types of wool and fabrics. At some point, you stop simply ‘following the plan’ and begin having a kind of dialogue with the material. Sometimes it suggests a solution I hadn’t considered at all, and the work becomes more interesting because of it.”
That may be why no two felted pieces ever turn out exactly alike. An industrial rug can be produced in batches of hundreds of identical pieces. Hand felting doesn’t work that way. Even if you repeat the same design, use the same wool and the same colors, the shrinkage will be slightly different, the fibers will settle differently, and the density or shade may shift in places. A one-of-a-kind piece isn’t the result of a marketing decision to make something feel more exclusive. It is simply part of the process.
And even after years of working with wool, Vera doesn’t feel that the material has been fully explored.
“I still don’t feel that I know everything about it. Wool can be extremely delicate and almost transparent, or it can become dense and architectural. It can be combined with silk, organza, and different fibers to create relief, folds, openings, and very complex surfaces. Right now, I’m especially interested in working with it not so much as a textile, but as a material for creating form, light, and shadow. I think what keeps me interested is the feeling that every time, there is still some new quality of the material to discover.”
What interested us was another property of wool. Its fibers absorb fragrance oil well and hold it within the material. For the Felt Diffuser, that became especially important: the fragrance remains in the wool and gradually diffuses into the surrounding space, without a spray, heat, or an open container of liquid.
It creates an interesting shift in scale. In Vera’s work, wool becomes a large wall piece or rug, where surface, relief, light, and shadow matter. In the diffuser, the same material becomes a small everyday object, and an entirely different quality comes to the foreground.
Vera was drawn to that idea as well:
“Yes, and I really love that idea. We often think of wool in a fairly conventional way—as a material for clothing or interiors—but in reality, it has so many more possibilities. I find it interesting to see its natural properties begin to work at a completely different scale and for a different purpose. In a large piece, I use wool primarily to create form, surface, and texture, while here another quality becomes important—its ability to hold fragrance. But the material remains the same, and I find that connection very beautiful.”
Vera’s work and our Felt Diffuser are very different things. She creates large-scale original pieces; we make a small object for the home. What connects them, above all, is the material.
Perhaps that is exactly what we like about wool. It doesn’t need to pretend to be anything else. It holds its shape, retains warmth, absorbs oil, and changes over time along with the object it becomes part of. In a wall piece, you notice it immediately. In a small diffuser, you barely notice it at all. But the material is working by the same rules.
Discover more of Vera Alexandrova’s work and practice here:
https://www.alexanderova.com/about-me
https://www.instagram.com/vera_alexanderova