Making Wool Live

On the wool animation of Hermína Týrlová.

A still from Two Balls of Wool (1962)

Welcome! Today’s issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter is all about animating with wool — a style developed and perfected by the Czech director Hermína Týrlová.

Týrlová (who was born in 1900 and lived until 1993) was among the greatest artists ever to touch stop motion. She co-founded Czech animation as a whole in the ‘20s, and then stuck with the scene throughout her long life. By the ‘40s, her stop-motion films were popular and highly decorated.

But Týrlová hit her stride in the late ‘50s. The Knot in the Handkerchief (1959), a film about a handkerchief that feels like a living thing, was a career resurgence for her. From this point, using odds and ends to tell stories became her specialty. Týrlová turned 60 years old in 1960 — but she was only getting better.

One critic described her as that rare case: an artist who manages late in their career to “renew their creative ability to the extent that they create the highest and best work of their life.”¹ Around this time, Týrlová’s “wool series” began.

The way that she and her team used wool to animate was a revelation — a whole new style. To quote historian Jan Poš:

During the period 1963 through 1969, Týrlová created six “wooly” fairy tales, tender ministories, in which the actors were puppets made out of woolen yarn. These pieces represent perhaps the best of what Czech animation did for its youngest audience.²

Let’s not limit it: Týrlová’s wool films hold interest for all ages. They’re beautiful, odd, mesmerizing things. That’s what we’re discovering today. Here we go!