What is drip tufting?
Drip tufting is a hand-tufting technique I developed in Cyprus. Wool gradients are built thread by thread into melting mountain silhouettes, in colour combinations that are deliberately bold and poppy. People often assume the trick is in the trimming. It is not. The trick is in the gradient.
The three things that make a drip
Every drip tufted piece stands on three decisions. The first is the gradient. I do not dye fabric and I do not blend colours the way a printer would. I build the transition physically, thread by thread, mixing strands of wool in the tufting gun so that one colour dissolves into the next in small, granular steps. Stand close and you see single threads of crimson inside the orange. Step back and the whole surface flows.
The second is the colour combination. The palettes come from real hours of real days in Cyprus, the pink and orange of a sunrise, the deep red of a sunset, acid green after rain in the Troodos mountains. I push them louder than nature dares to. Poppy colour against sunburnt ground is the tension the whole collection lives on.
The third is the form. A drip is a melting silhouette, a mountain that has given up holding its shape. The outline is drawn so the piece looks like it is still moving, as if it would keep flowing down the wall if you looked away.
How a piece is made
Each work starts as a sketch, usually answering a photograph of a Cypriot sky. Then comes the slowest part, laying out the gradient. Strands of wool are arranged, rejected and rearranged until the transition matches the light in the photograph. Only then does the tufting gun start, drawing the silhouette and filling it, colour field by colour field, thread mix by thread mix. At the end the surface is sheared and the edges are shaped so the relief catches the light. That finishing pass matters, but it is a reveal, not the invention.
Where it came from
I grew up in the Rhine Main area in Germany and moved to Old Paphos in Cyprus. The summer here presses down on the stone until the land looks like it could soften. I photographed hundreds of sunsets from my balcony and at some point photographing was not enough. I wanted to hold those gradients in my hands. Tufting gave me the surface, and the heat gave me the form. The first collection in the technique is called Liquid Mountains.
Originals and editions
Originals and studies are one of a kind works, hand-tufted by me in the Paphos studio. Each carries a work number, a signature and a certificate. Limited editions are produced with partner workshops in Pakistan under the care of my co-founder Alizay, then finished, checked and signed in Paphos. The path of every piece is named in its specs. No guesswork, for collectors or for press.