Drip Check 01: Shishi San, when a vase is made of pile

Most tufted pieces lie flat. Shishi San’s stand up. Her vases have a front, a back and a shadow, and the pile does the job that porcelain usually does.

The work

Shishi San is a self-taught textile artist based in Brussels. She picked up the tufting gun in 2019 and, in her own words, found her artistic identity by going past the limits of classical tufting. Her first collection, Fluffy vases, is a series of three-dimensional tufted vessels. A second series, the 3D flower vases, puts tufted blooms into tufted pots.

In March 2023 Colossal featured her Fluffy Collection: nine voluminous vessels that take their shapes, hues and patterns from traditional Chinese vases. “I wanted to create my own version of them, inspired both by my own experiences and by their visual identity,” she told the magazine. Alongside the vases she makes playful flowers, insects and creatures, all in tufted yarn with a soft, dense pile.

© Shishi San. Source: shishisan.com

What we see as makers

Volume changes colour. On a flat rug a red is a red. On a curved vase the same red turns darker on the sides and lighter on the belly because the pile catches light differently. Shishi San uses that: her gradients are often not tufted, they are shaped.

Pattern survives the cut. Chinese vase motifs are fine and detailed. In yarn they become chunky, and that is the point. The pattern reads from across the room, like a memory of the original rather than a copy.

Every piece has an edge. Her outlines are clean. For a tufter that means one thing: carving. The shape is decided after tufting, with scissors, not before.

The drip connection

Jan Fechner’s drip tufting, the technique he developed and the signature style of BUBU Studio, starts with the idea that wool is liquid for a moment, that colour runs into colour. Shishi San’s work is the opposite temperature. Her colours are fixed in form, held by a silhouette. Seeing both side by side makes the choice clear: do you let the colour run, or do you pour it into a shape?

If you want to feel the difference with a tufting gun in your hand, we have dates every week in Paphos.

Cover image © Shishi San, via Colossal. Sources: Kate Mothes, “Shishi San’s Vibrant Tufted Sculptures Celebrate the Colorful Vessels of Chinese Culture”, Colossal, 30 March 2023, thisiscolossal.com. Artist website shishisan.com. All artwork © Shishi San.