'It Offers Sanity': Artist Lucy Sparrow Creates Faux Pharmacy With 15,000 Items Made Entirely From Felt

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - A new pharmacy that's opened in London includes everything from cold medicines and health products to coronavirus test kits and vaccines. But it's all made entirely from felt.

The "Bourden Street Chemist" is the latest addition to British artist Lucy Sparrow's portfolio of exhibitions made from felt.

"I hope [the exhibition] invokes nostalgia, a feeling of calm, in a place where you wouldn't necessarily feel calm but it offers sanity when maybe you're not quite feeling very sane," she tells Reuters.

The pharmacy contains over 15,000 individual items. Each product is hand-sewn, hand-stuffed and hand-painted.

"One single item probably takes about 20 minutes, but everything is made in batches so it makes it a lot simpler to make, a lot of one thing in stages, and it's a whole process, yes," she explains.

Prices for individual items range from approximately $40 USD to $170 USD, depending on the size.

"I think my absolute favorite item is the probably the family pack of toothbrushes, just because there's so many of them, and it's just such a lovely item," she confesses. "All the bristles are made from thread and it's nice and interactive."

The exhibition opened April 19 at the Lyndsey Ingram art gallery in Mayfair with pre-booked visitors accepted for only three weeks. It was a year in the making, according to Sparrow, having been delayed several times due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We do absolutely have some coronavirus related items here," she reveals. "We've got a coronavirus test, we've got some syringes, and we do have some vaccines but we've just sold out, but we'll get some more in the next week."

The exhibition marked Sparrow's return to Great Britain after four years of exhibiting her faux-reality felt worlds in Beijing, New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

In 2018, Sparrow exhibited a faux supermarket at the Standard Hotel in downtown LA, featuring 31,000 items -- from pizza to peanut butter.