In the higher mountain ranges and valleys of Nepal, warmth has become essential rather than simply desirable. It has been the situation that, without the concept of heating and manufactured fabrics, wool with its qualities of being soft, strong, and warm has remained the fabric that protects the hands from the morning or the winter chill. Thus, the woolen hand warmers have evolved.
Natural wool also has a distinct quality that contributes to keeping warm without allowing that warmth to make the skin suffocate, unlike many materials that contain wool as a major fiber content. Weather conditions in the Himalayan ranges often fluctuate from the warmness of the sun to places that receive shades, thus a material that combines these properties, as in a hand warmer, would be most ideal. Natural wool retains warmth without causing suffocation, thus ideal for use in hands, which are always on the move. This explains why a woolen hand warmers turn out to be a regular companion in villages and towns that are geographically located in the Himalayan ranges.
For many of the works in the series, the source may well be the Nepalese workshops that continue to work with the wool with the attention to detail that is not compatible with speed. They manually knit or weave each handmade woolen hand warmers using the traditional methods that have been handed down from generation to generation. These pieces are characterised by the lack of speed in the process and the attention to detail that makes each one distinctly different from the machine-made winter hand warmers.
Himalayan wool has a sense of provenance. It’s local, where local means something that’s long been an ordinary part of life in some region. The point of a Himalayan wool handwarmers is not that you display it on a shelf, where its purpose is decoration, but that you want to use it—that you want it to be functional enough to go along with your hands, sturdy enough to go back into use season after season.
Second, they are applicable to the sustainability debate in that they are made from wool. The reality is that wool is a sustainable and biodegradable material. In addition to that, it is actually quite durable. Provided it is well maintained, to start with, it can last for quite a long period of time. The importance of acquiring the Nepali wool handwarmer is that it encourages a production process that is not excessive.
During the cold months, the wool hand-warmer becomes something more than mere layers of warmth. This could be considered the little comfort in life, which subtly links the wearer with the feeling of existence in the Himalayas and with natural materials and the deliberate process of life with warmth as opposed to the consumption of it.
