Why I think the term “hybrid” is confusing and hurts more than it helps.

I was disappointed to find out that a piece of mine had been described as “wet and hybrid felted” at a recent show.  It upset me and not just because the show labeled my work without asking me, but because I believe the whole recent trend to use the word “hybrid” in felting is misguided, and here I was swept up into its silliness.

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“Hybrid” is being used to replace the term “nuno.”   “Nuno” was a term coined in the 1994 by pioneering felt artist Polly Stirling, who developed this technique with her assistant, Sachiko Kotaka, and named it after the japanese word for fabric: “nuno.”   “Nuno” describes a genre of felt where wool is felted through a woven material.  Wool becomes enmeshed in the open weave of appropriate fabrics and, as the wool shrinks and gathers the fabric, it can produce lovely effects which look naturally “ruched” or organically textured.  Wool alone can (though it does not always) produce naturally bulky fabrics, but felting through more flexible fabrics allowed for a making a lighter felt piece.  The combination offers the best of both worlds: the characteristic look and transformative process of felting natural to the wool and the lovely drape & look natural to the fabric.  Therefore, felting through fabric is very useful for fashion applications and is used with great enthusiasm by a majority of feltmakers the world over.  By using the term “nuno,” we refer to this combination of felted wool and fabrics and we pay homage to the feltmakers who originally developed these techniques.  So, not only does “nuno” have this history,  but it is also an established, useful, and practical term with market-appeal: many people associate “nuno” with the art of  light-weight felts; and making light-weight felts (for wearable art or interior projects) is the most prevalent use of the “laminated,” “enmeshed,” or “hybrid” medium.

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If  “nuno” is such a useful term, if it fits the history and is true to the technique, and if it ain’t broke, why fix it?  I don’t know….but it hasn’t stopped people from trying.  Over time, there have been other terms for “nuno” which try to be more descriptive, such as “laminate” felt, “enmeshed” felt and the recently-coined term “hybrid.”  ”Laminate,”  has its definite drawbacks as it is more likely to make a person think of Home Depot flooring made from wood and un-pronouncable, possibly toxic additives, adhesives, and glues rather than of the beautiful pieces of organically-produced fabric it is trying to describe.  ”Laminate” does do a good job, though, of coming close to describing the actual process of felting through fabric: a layering of wool fibers and fabrics and the subsequent felting to enmesh the fibers through the fabric.  Like “laminate,” “enmeshed” gives us some inkling of what is going on as it tried to be descriptive;  though I might argue that “enmeshed” might bring to mind a difficult situation rather than a beautiful felting technique (like being “enmeshed” in a controversy about the term “hybrid.”).  ”Hybrid” is the most recent contender on the field.  As many terms that have come before it, “hybrid” also tries to describe the felted offspring of wool and fabric.***

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The word “hybrid” sounds somewhat futuristic; it is a term used in abundance in advertising to sell us new cars (Prius “Hybrids” which we have all sat behind in traffic); and it is a term used in many biological fields, like horticulture to describe a process of crossbreeding to form such marvels of nature as the “lymon” (lemon plus lime, a favorite marketing nugget of the 7-up crowd).   So “hybrid” also comes with its fair share of baggage, connotation, and context.  From what I gather, “hybrid” is being used as a catch-all for felting through something else, whether it be silk or fabric (which “nuno” is specific to), mesh or wire or you-name-it.  So “hybrid” is an extended definition that means to not only encapsulate the well-established field of nuno (which I would argue is the lion’s-share of where this technique is being used) but to the ends of embracing the seldom-used materials of wire-mesh, lathe, open-spots in fencing, etc. etc.

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First off, I would wonder at the need for a new terminology:  though felting through diverse materials is natural to the art-making process, there is hardly a vibrant field of “felt mesh”  or “hybrid felt” artists as there are “nuno felters” or just plain “feltmakers” (felters, etc).  Wool does not transform these materials as it does lighter-weight fabrics and other fibers.  Wool is not strong enough to produce the beautiful “ruching” in metal mesh that it does with a light silk fabric.  At best, it is wool that is felted around a structure where the two elements can easily be separated again.  Is something “hybrid” if it can be separated?   Given that wool and wire mesh can be easily separated back into the individual components, so too can wool and fabrics be separated.  So we are not really talking about the “hybrid” nature of the piece just as you can not separate the lion from the tiger in a “Liger.”

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Since wool does not have the strength to transform wire-mesh, lathe, etc., and is simply felted around it,  in a contest between materials like these and felted wool, the stronger materials win.  So the notion that the piece has become “hybridized” is misplaced, because the piece has not become anything new insofar as fish caught in a tangled net does not become a “hyrbidized net fish.”  I would offer that the term “felt collage” or “felt assemblage” might be better suited to describing this use of enmeshed wool in addition to having far more relevance to the intersecting worlds of felt and fine art.  As an art historian, I can vouch for the fact that there is a well-established history of collage and assemblage that felt artists would be wise to appeal to.

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Essentially, I feel that the recent push to use a trendy term like “hybrid” is inspired by the desire on the part of certain felt artists to elevate felt to the next level of art, so in a sense, it is a “re-branding” of the medium.  I disagree that the medium needs “re-branding” and think that this adds to the general confusion already out there about what “felt” refers to.  As a felt artist myself, I have been on the frontlines of explaining the many different types of felt to a bewildered public: what is wet-felt, nuno felt, needle-felt, boiled wool, fulled wool, pressed wool, craft felt, designer felt, industrial felt.  Why is nuno felt different from the felt used to cover pool tables? Did I knit it and then felt it down?  These are all questions that professional feltmakers have had to explain one-too-many-times.  In recent years, I have noticed a change in the public’s understanding of felting:  more people know that boiled wool refers to wool that has been knitted and then felted,  more people have an inkling of the clay-like process of wet-felting, and more people know that there is a big difference between the acrylic felt that they find at the craft store, produced by industrial means of big steam and heat machines, and the high-quality, hand-crafted material that felt artists are producing.   More and more people will look at the work and say “this is nuno, right?” with the confidence of being in-the-know.   Now, when so many feltmakers have fought to hard fight for public education and these efforts are finally making a dent, why would it be helpful to throw new terminology out there like “hybrid?”   It’s not.  In fact, the other day, I heard an artist new to the medium struggle with whether to call her work “nuno” or “hybrid.”  Such confusion not only debases years of public education and the strong history of this type of felt collage, but it attacks an artist’s very ability to describe his/her own work with confidence.

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Since there is a great deal of confusion in the world  when it comes to “felt” and all the different media that that term encompasses (Wet-felt, boiled wool, fulled wool, designer felt, craft felt, needle felt, industrial/pressed felt, and general non-wovens).  Using the new term “hybrid,” in my opinion, adds to this confusion more than it helps.  Though we might search for a term to group all of these varieties together into a more manageable package, perhaps it would be of more service to recognize the variety of ways that artist use felting techniques to achieve their finished results, as there are, in fact, a variety of different and distinct ways to do it.  ”Felt” in and of itself, is a “hybrid” term encompassing many disciplines, so “hybrid felt” is not only reductive (trying to recombine different techniques into a one-size-fits-all term), but it is redundant.

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Where does one begin with the word “hybrid” in feltmaking?  The wool breeds could be said to by “hybrids” (for example, “Cormo” sheep are a hybrid breed of Merino and Corriedale breeds).  My roving is a blend of wool and other fibers, such as Merino carded with raw silk fibers or angora fibers from goats, are these also “hybrids?”  Many fabrics are “hybrids” as they blend cotton & silk or wool & rayon, etc.  Are these fabrics naturally hybrids?  At what point does “hybrid” accurately describe the results and magic of felting?   At what point is it limited to “wool felted through other materials” in a way that other words, like “collage” or “assemblage” would not be far better suited to?

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In conclusion, I believe that the recent adoption of the term “hybrid” is an attempt to “re-brand” the technique for the purpose of very few artists.  I do not feel that it accurately describes the process and it does not respect the history of this technique.  I am not comfortable with my work being described as “hybrid” felt, as I resoundly reject this recent terminology as both personally distasteful and for the disservice it does by contradicting the history of feltmaking and adding more ambiguous terminology to an already confusing field which only harms the overall artform.   As an art historian, I feel strongly that it is our duty to respect the history of the medium and that there is great power & responsibility in how we use these terms to convey the nature of the making of the felt piece.   I feel that consensus regarding felting terminology allows the medium to grow, rather than to be written and re-written with new terms.  As I am often involved in felt education, having a consistent terminology is important if we are to hope for non-felters to understand and appreciate the medium, its many varieties and each felting techniques’ unique challenges.

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****Allow me to point out, though, how it is being used to describe my piece: “Wet and Hybrid Felted.” In this case, it is being used to describe the process itself and not just the result.  Therefore, in addition to going through a process of “wet felting” (specific to using hot water and soap to mesh together wool fibers to form a felted material), my piece went through the nebulous process of “hybrid felting.”   This makes even less sense than the notion that it is a finished piece of “hybrid felt.”  Did I make my felt using “hybridizing” techniques?  Though this sounds very grand, it is inappropriate and ill-suited to the simple truth that I used fabric in my work, for which the established term “nuno” happily suffices.

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