Jared Flood

Jared Flood
Born 9 July 1982
Tacoma, Washington
Nationality American
Known for Textiles

Jared Flood is an American knitwear designer, photographer, and founder of the design house and yarn manufacturer Brooklyn Tweed. His work is inspired by historical hand-knitting traditions of the British Isles and Scandinavia but imagined for contemporary urban life.[1][2][3] Flood has aligned himself with the local purchasing movement, committing his yarn company to sourcing and milling all its wool in the United States.[4]

Early life

Flood was born in 1982 in Tacoma, Washington, the third son of Jeff and Gail Flood. His mother taught him to knit in childhood,[1][5] but he did not embrace the craft until his college years at the University of Puget Sound.

Career

Flood moved to Brooklyn, NY to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the New York Academy of Art in 2005. Although his education was in two-dimensional art, particularly photography, painting, and drawing, he became increasingly interested in the beauty and utility of knitting design, viewing knitwear as art with a function.[6] He began Brooklyn Tweed as a website and knitting blog, quickly acquiring a following for his photography of knitted objects and his modern designs for men. A paucity of high quality, fashionable knitwear patterns for men sparked an interest in creating his own garments.[7] In 2007 he published his first designs and instructional articles in Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting,[8][9] and in 2009 he released his first knitwear collection, Made in Brooklyn, in collaboration with Classic Elite Yarns.[10] He completed his MFA the same year with a thesis on ekphrasis theory,[2] then turned his attention to developing his own brand of yarn and supporting it with design collections. Brooklyn Tweed released Shelter, a worsted-weight wool yarn grown by Targhee-Columbia sheep in Wyoming and milled in Harrisville, New Hampshire in 2010.[11] The following year the company offered a lighter, fingering-weight version called Loft.[12] Flood collaborated with several other designers to release pattern collections for hand knitting; since 2011 Brooklyn Tweed has published three seasonal collections by house designers each year as well as biannual collections of patterns by guest designers.[13] Flood is a prominent figure among a new generation of independent knitwear designers who have successfully used digital publishing, online distribution, and social media to form a direct relationship with customers, circumventing reliance on traditional print media and large publishing houses to disseminate their work.[5][13][14] His philosophy of garment design and construction is influenced by the work of Elizabeth Zimmermann, and he draws inspiration from Japanese textile, architectural, and interior design;[15] urban street fashion; and traditional hand-knitting from northern Europe.[2][3] Flood says that texture is his medium[2] and that the experience of the hand-knitter must be an essential element of each design.[4]

References

  1. 1 2 Petrovski, Leslie (Winter 2008/09). "All you need is glove." Vogue Knitting.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Petrovski, Leslie (August 2009). "Flood of Inspiration." Yarn Market News.
  3. 1 2 Bradley, Debora (July 2009). "Inspirational Pioneers." The Knitter, Issue 8 (United Kingdom).
  4. 1 2 "Interview: Jared Flood." (October 2011) Knit Circus.
  5. 1 2 "Commentary Warwickshire" radio interview (5 June 2009). British Broadcasting Corporation.
  6. ↑ Brown, Larissa (2011). My Grandmother’s Knitting. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang. pp. 40-42. ISBN 978-1584799399.
  7. ↑ Weiss, Jennifer (August 25, 2014). "Crafty Men Unwind With Knitting". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
  8. ↑ Flood, Jared (Fall 2009). "Going Seamless, Part 1." Vogue Knitting.
  9. ↑ Flood, Jared (Winter 2009). "Going Seamless, Part 2." Vogue Knitting.
  10. ↑ Matheson, Michele (Winter 2009). "Master Knitter: Jared Flood." Knitting Magazine (United Kingdom).
  11. ↑ Interweave Knits Staff (Fall 2012). "Shorn in the U.S.A." Interweave Knits.
  12. ↑ "The Knitter Loves..." (February 2012). The Knitter, Issue 39 (United Kingdom).
  13. 1 2 Parkes, Clara (Summer 2012). "The Booklet." Interweave Knits.
  14. ↑ Reagan, Gillian (2 February 2009). "Website for Knitting Nuts Has New York Needlers in Stitches." The New York Observer.
  15. ↑ "On the Needles: Jared Flood." (February 2011) Simply Knitting (United Kingdom).

External links

See also

Flood, Jared (Fall 2010). "Dining with Elizabeth." Vogue Knitting.

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, September 16, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.