Oliver Jeffers is a Northern Irish visual artist and author who uses painting, illustration, and storytelling to explore how we relate and make sense of the world around us. Humor and curiosity underscore each project, whether his critically acclaimed picture books or original artwork.
On February 25, FEIT launched a design collaboration with Oliver Jeffers: “All That We Need”, a capsule of special-edition Indoor Slippers developed for the first time children, as well as adults. Accompanying each pair is an artbook written and illustrated by Jeffers exclusively for FEIT. The project uses craftsmanship and art to simplify the message of our relationship with the planet, and each other. This collaboration is the latest installment of FEIT partnering with creators exemplary in their respective fields; past partners include BDDW, craft furniture and design, and Toogood, installations and interiors.
“All That We Need” highlights our place within the natural world: the sun provides energy for trees to grow, the trees create wood so we can make fire, the fire creates tools that we use with our hands to build “useful things” like shoes, so we can walk across Earth to be with each other. Motifs from the booklet—trees, fire, hammers, hands, and feet—decorate the vegetable-tanned leather slippers, as well as the dust bag made from organic cotton.
“We are not separate from nature. We are not above nature. We are an intricate part of it. And so whatever we do has to be part of a cyclical existence. [‘All That We Need’] acknowledges that we're part of a greater system than just our own lifetime. And that we ultimately, all human beings, regardless of who and where you're from, need other people,” says Jeffers.
“Oliver is one of the people who is putting out a very important perspective out into the world that people need to hear at an important time. It connects to the way FEIT considers and looks at the products it makes and the attention to detail that goes into that entire process. Everything that FEIT uses comes from nature. And then, like Oliver's story says, everything we use comes from nature… it's a very natural synergy,” says Tull Price, FEIT founder.
Jeffers and Price selected Brooklyn’s ‘Small Editions’, specializing in bookbinding, box making, and risograph printing, to publish the book. “Rather than just having it mass-produced, we thought of ways in which we can use older printing techniques for something that is more considered, handmade, and local,” says Price.
