Felt Tuesday: Josh Jakus

let's take a quick jaunt back to the US for tuesday's felt feature and talk about berkeley-based artist and designer, josh jakus. concerned with making experiential connections between form and function, most of josh's items are made from industrial pressed wool felt recovered from factory excess. easy on the eyes and the environment - can't beat that.

my favorite of his designs is the eggflat. the eggflat evolved out of an experiment in bending surfaces along seams. it folds flat for storage and unfurls to hold coins, keys, fruit, and other small treasures. also, individual units can be joined laterally to form a landscape of sorts. sneaky! another favorite is jakus' winepocket. the result of an exercise in reducing the amount of material and labor required to protect wine during transit, the winepocket stores flat then expands to fit most bottles. the opening also doubles as a handle. and finally, let's talk about the um bag. these are awesome. measuring as tall as a bottle of wine and as wide as a bundled-up Sunday Times, the um bag is comes in the standard grey pressed felt - but you can choose between four different designs and a blue, grey, green, or orange self-locking zipper. and check out how the bags unzip flat! and finally, we've got some coasters - remnants from making the circular handles for the um totes and winepockets. the coasters are linked by a single seam of heavy orange thread.
you can buy josh's creations on his website, or lots of web retailers, including one of our favorites, branch home.