Japanese Textile Workshops 　日本のテキスタイル　ワークショップ

Lynette Anderson San

2012-01-26T19:49:00.011+09:00

I was up early in the morning and the thermometer read minus seven. It had snowed a few more centimeters but this was easily shoveled away. Layers are the best way to go with clothing on a trip into Tokyo on a day like this. Leave the heavy leather coat in the jeep and make a mad dash for the train. The heat was on in the Tokyo Dome for the 'Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival'. (Couldn't they come up with a name that slid a little easier off the tongue?) I could swear I heard the old Sesame Street tune, "One of these things is not like the other , one of these things just doesn't belong...." on the PA system as I walked in. Thousands and thousands of quilter women and one rough looking snow shoveler bumbling in.

I was still bundled up toasty warm not quite sure why I was even there. I suppose I wanted to see quilts made with old Japanese textile scraps and there were some antique textile dealers from all over Japan. Great stuff. Always makes me smile. And to check out potential shops that the tour members would be interested in visiting. I brought along a few recent magazine articles about my work to make it easier to approach someone and strike up a conversation. For Japanese I can look a little scary with a beard fresh off the road cleaning crew.

My first stop was at Lynette Anderson's booth. She is beautiful and holding down her fort with her daughter and a Japanese translator. I was not quite in sync with the mood of the of the place, slightly sleepy from the snow and train ride and ten layers of clothes. I was fumbling around in my bag to find magazines and explain what I was doing at a quilt show. My face was red for some reason and then I realized it was partially because I was a walking sauna. Try peeling off a few layers of sweaters and keep a casual conversation going with someone you just met. Suddenly wet sweaty hair stuck to your forehead...
I couldn't find my camera to take a picture of the booth until Lynette reminded me that it was hanging around my neck and not in the bag. Her daughter giggled at my stupid face as I struggled to get it off my neck and take the picture. What a geek. Jeesh.
Look a the expression on their faces....entertained by the bumbling silk farming dork.

This is the same view yesterday morning as the 'Fresh Green' on the right side of the blog.

It snows and it gets shoveled, then it snows again....someone has hit the repeat button.

I have trouble getting links in this blog. I have a feeling it is Japan. Here is Lynette's quilting website. http://www.lynetteandersondesigns.com.au/

Tokyo Quilt Festival

2012-01-25T22:30:00.014+09:00

It is hard to digest all the work there. It is impressive to see how much thought and work go into making the quilts. An old line from a high school text book popped into my head. It was from Kennith Clarke in his "Civilization" TV series on the BBC. "It is hard to define what civilization is but not so difficult to see what it is not."

I prefer the quilts that would actually be used on a bed to keep warm. Most are made to hang on the wall. This is fine but still... A little wear and tear would make them look more beautiful. And hundreds of quilts hanging up under fluorescent lighting in a huge sports/rock concert arena. I would be nicer to see them in a venue more respecting the the millions of hours spent on the stitching and designing.

So many things impressed me. Here are some pictures.

Small scraps of silk Oshima tsumugi. It was good to see this precious silk used on something that will be kept for many years. Often these old kimono are taken apart and made into western clothing.

This was a clever usage of the old linen/cotton bags that were used to filter miso and make soy sauce.

Here the overall design is Japanese and the colors are very Japanese. The small shape motifs are so clever as well.

Of course their were plenty of blossom theme Japanese quilts.

This one was just crazy creative and cool.

A lot of indigo in the quilts,

End of the Year Party

2012-01-21T16:50:00.010+09:00

Instead of going to restaurant for the class bonenkai it seemed better to do something practical and memorable. We made 75 kg of miso outside the front door.
The soy beans are put in fresh stream water overnight and boiled for six hours. Then they are smushed in a huge zelkova wood mortar. Then rice with bacteria is added with salt and mixed with our hands. It was a cold day and except for the sting of the salt the warm mush felt fine.
It takes half a year for the miso to ferment. Then we can all enjoy it every day with our miso soup and with any number of Japanese dishes that use miso as a base. Soya sauce forms on the top of the miso as it ferments for an added treat.

Tohei made fresh udon from scratch...wonderful day.

The Crazy Ones...

2012-01-19T17:00:00.020+09:00

I have been a Apple/Mac fan and Steve Jobs admirer my entire adult life. OK. He wasn't the perfect human but he stood where humanities met technology and did about as good as a job as it as I can imagine. I read and re-read his biography over the winter vacation. And checked out that old ad campaign for the Crazy Ones...

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rwsuXHA7RA

(the link might not work from Japan. Just search on youtube for 'Think Different.')

The ad featured short clips of Bob Dylan, Amelia Earhardt, Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Jim Henson (muppets) , Martha Graham, Maria Callas, Alfred Hitchcock, John and Yoko etc.

Near my house two dear friends live and work. Their studio is called, 'Saiseiryu'. Recycle Way. They are both Japanese. She was born in Japanese occupied China and grew up in Tokyo and Moscow during the cold war. She later worked for several top Japanese designers,(Issey Miyake) and later worked as a clothing designer in Hong Kong and then many years in New York with their own brand (Pluto Cat on the Earth) with her husband. They never thought about selling as a priority. The fun and integrity are priorities. They don't think about integrity but instinctively work with materials that reflect their ever evolving relationship with this over-crowded and over consuming human species that is amusing itself and the planet to death. They make all their own clothing. Like John and Yoko they sit and talk about ideas and then actualize their ideas. (In their clothing.) After September 11th in New York they moved back and live a quiet life in the mountains near me. My town is famous for artists and I often wonder where they are....there are a few talented and famous and successful writers and painters and potters near by and I have been lucky to know them all these years. But Saiseiryu are special. They are still growing and their work has substance because it is real time as well as connected to the world at large. We had circled and eyed each other from a distance for a few years before becoming friends. Now I tear up thinking of the privilage it is to be near them.

They use only cloth they have picked up and re make it into...I could write volumes. But this post is about the New Years precious present they gave me.

They are almost universally seen as crazy. To me they are about the only sane ones in the town. They showed up at my house to pick up some stuff dressed in The Jetsons meet Space Janitor self-designed white nuclear clean-up uniforms with comical non-functional hard hats and Dalai Lama pictures and 'Toxic Waste Beware' printed on their plutonium clean up crew jumpsuits a week or so after the nuclear accident. "We were either ten years ahead or ten years late when we were wearing these in New York." I just kept a straight face as we had coffee and cookies but my other visiting friends thought they were actually heading up to Fukushima in these nutty outfits to clean up the reactor. I had a much needed laugh for days at their genius and guts.

Last year just sucked. Nuclear......grrrrrr.

It is an old tradition that the neighborhood guys put on a dragon/lion suit and come in through the front door and dance around your house uninvited to clean out the last year's bad energy and bring in new energy.

They showed up on New Years Eve with Jun dressed in a hand-made green robot bird and danced around my house with incense purifying the house and bringing in fresh energy for the coming year. Why a bird? "I don't want to be a human anymore....look at the stupid things they do. I'd rather be a bird and fly away from this mess."

Snoopy was feigning disinterest but she later winked and said that it is better to just play along with a straight face. I could have swore I heard her giggling insanely in her sleep that night.

Indigo Fermentation Started

2011-12-27T15:59:00.002+09:00

Posted on my tour blog...sorry for repeats.

I got two decent harvests of indigo leaves from the same plants this past summer. Stripping the leaves off the stems gives you cleaner indigo balls. It is debatable if the is really worth it. (Some good sake and some friends talking as you work is enough to tip the balance.) The leaves were dried in the sun and kept up under the rafters to keep them as crispy as possible. It is really cold now and time to start them fermenting three or four months to make the bacteria laden sukumo/indigo balls. First we gathered some oak leaves and laid a good solid 50 cm bed on the dirt floor inside the recently cleaned out kura. The indigo leaves were wet and then half wrung out and placed in a straw bag. The wet indigo leaves bag gets put on the oak leaves and covered with another 50 centimeters of oak leaves and then a heavier straw mat placed on top and heavy stones to weigh it down and keep out oxygen. You want a slow ferment not a quick rot!

I am hoping that the fermentation goes slow so I can open it up when the tour is here in April. If it gets too warm it goes a little ripe. Fingers crossed!

Wishing everyone who reads my blogs a peaceful and meaningful winter holiday season.

Bryan

Loom to Go.

2011-12-26T19:08:00.005+09:00

There are just too many looms in the house. I've collected a dozen or so old Kanagawa Takabata over the years. They were an easy find not so many years ago. Easy to spot in barn lofts and attics. Always missing parts and always slightly different from the others so spare parts had to be made from scratch. This one had to be over a hundred years old and like a three leg dog it got a little more love than some others that ended up as firewood.

Suzuki san is the infamous miser in the village. He had heard that I had bought a loom in the neighboring village and asked if I needed another. His grandmother had woven on it. It was black from the fireplace smoke. It was just pathetically rotten and eaten. As well as missing just about everything. When I loaded it on the truck and then went in for tea I asked him how much he wanted. I expected a "just take it" and I would hand him 10 000 yen and there would be show down to make him accept that. I laughed out load when he said he wanted 30 000 for it. I counted out three bills and told him what a great deal he was giving me. ( So he could grind his teeth all night that he didn't charge me more.) When he was young he was the only guy in the village who could read well. He worked on the board of education and he found out that the government was subsidising the mountain villagers to grow cypress that was needed for the rebuilding after world war two. He then leased all the land off as many willing villagers he could convince for a pittance and collected the subsidy money for himself. What a crook.
I love to hear the old stories from the villagers. Twenty one houses for hundreds of years...the same families and a whole spectrum of characters.

Anyway, I used the loom on and off and figured it was time to retire it to the wood stove. Takeshima san came to the rescue and it is now living in Adachi ku in downtown Tokyo! It practically fell apart as we attempted to dismantle it and lower it out the second floor window. Takeshima san will put it to good use.

Scandinavian Looms Alive.

2011-12-11T15:55:00.004+09:00

The two big Scandinavian Looms are alive these days. Kamei san finished up weaving four panels for a bed throw. She wove steadfast and sooo cleanly. I am proud of her. She had to weave to the last last centimeter possible to make the length for the fourth panel. Good work! I will post a picture of the work when it is stitched together and finished up.

Takeshima san is on the other end of a big project. Threading the reed. She is about to weave a poncho like blanket. Some dyes are natural and some chemical. It is her first time weaving a tweed. She is playing around with weft threads to get it just right before she starts the long haul 8 meter weave.

Dying with Cedar Bark and Alder cones on Silk

2011-12-11T14:59:00.010+09:00

Left: Alder iron mordant overdyed with a single indigo dip. Middle: Alder cones with Copper mordant. Right: Cedar bark with copper mordant.

The mountain's decidious trees are vibrant copper and the veins of muted lumberjack green colored cedar trees that climb the gullies and hide the family graveyards were the inspiration for Tuesday's dyed silk.

The students who come regularly on Tuesday travel up to several hours to come to the house to study. I try to fit in some extra activity each week to make the trip worth it. It might be picking mushrooms or citrus or watercress from near the house for lunch. Often it is a walk to get dying materials. Something seasonal. This time we stripped off some cedar bark and used that as a dye. While boiling the bark we added some strong acidic agent to get a low pH. You can use vinegar but need about 50 times the amount. Once the dye bath was ready we raised the pH back to almost 6 with slaked lime.

Yashbushi / Alder cones The trees grow up the mountain in front of the house. (A hard climb.) I found a jackpot forest of alder trees on the slopes of Mt Fuji. My friend Mark and I gathered a good size bucket of these cones there once.(A good one hour drive.)

On the walk to get the cedar bark Kawamoto san saw some vines for making baskets just out of reach over a 15 meter drop off. So I ended up with three students suspending me off the edge by the top of my jeans. It was Ok. I was just wearing regular grey long johns.
Guillaume (back row) is the French Woofer helping me with farm and carpentry work recently.

Cleaning out the Kura

2011-12-05T23:56:00.002+09:00

There is an old clay walled storehouse just outside my front door packed full of generations of semi-precious and semi-discarded belongings. Parking in front of it for 19 years and nothing changes except that more and more chunks of clay fall off and the twisted rice straw ropes and bamboo slats woven ingeniously into the heavy walnut pillars peak through..... like my own receding hairline. The covering is going to be shot sooner than later. Grin and bear it and think of eventual future options. A hat or some boards framed up the sides.

Last September the effort started by grappling and hauling out ten large wooden grain holders. Stepping on a rotten floorboard that whacked the resident Aodasho in head at the back musty dark corner I was lucky enough to have it wrap around my leg and bite me. Sheeeeesh.

The grain boxes have been sanded, oiled and outfitted and are being put to good use throughout the house as book cases, cupboards, tool cabinets.

The door has been left open since then hoping the snake would leave on it's own. He wasn't there when a small army of buddies helped rip out the floorboards two weekends ago . There was a collection of bottles of home made moonshine coveted away by someone. I heard from a neighbor that the great grandfather had fallen near the Snoopy-fall-in-river, broken a leg and then died from the injury just after the war. His secret stash lying there to be unearthed almost 70 years later. It was impossible not to ponder the changes that have taken place in the village and in the last century. Digging through the contents of the storehouse satisfied my inner archeologist. Old crumbling festival decorations to a kitchy 80's ceramic vase shaped like the Waikiki Hilton. Keeping an eye and an ear on the others to get a glimpse of what they were thinking and feeling I didn't register much. To them it seemed to be just a dirty old barn with the potential of being turned into a funky studio. They were probably keeping an eye and ear on me to see what I was planning to do with the space. (I am toying with a deadly cool bedroom/library/drawing room years down the road.)

There was plenty to think about as we hauled a mountain of everything out into the sunlight. Much of it hadn't seen the sunlight in a hundred years or so. And much of it smelled like it.
There were plenty of old saws and wooden buckets, barrels and tools whose functions are almost forgotten. A small horse saddle. (Visions of a poor miserable horsey in the cold up here where there was barely enough food for the people and plenty of back breaking work for him.) There were some poor looking loom parts and silk farming tools which I callously threw in the keep-warm fire without even closely examining them.

There were several broken down dressers with moth eaten piles of clothes. The older drawers contained kimono. A few hand woven men's silk kimono. Some badly deterioraed school uniforms from the 30s and the war period. The transition took place to western clothing in a single dresser. A heavy wool formal suit jacket and trousers. Neatly folded.

The clothing was spared the fire but thrown in the washing machine. Anything that survived the spin cycle would be considered keeping. A few items made it through.

One is this pilgrimage silk/linen jacket from before the war. It has been inked with a wood block of people climbing the mountain to reach some Buddhist figures and stamped with red ink. Beautifully galligraphed with the wearer's name, date, purpose and route of the pilgrimage. (The great-grandpa who had tripped and passed away three days later in 1946.) He had gone on a pilgrimage to a holy mountain and visited a Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple at the peak.

The owners of most of the stuff are long gone. They are in the family graveyard in the bamboo grove just above the house. It feels invasive to be rummaging through their belongings. It had to be done and decisiveness seemed to be the best defense against being creeped out. In the fire. In the garbage. In the washing machine. Re-boxed and put back.

Detour from Japanese Textiles

2011-12-01T16:07:00.011+09:00

Space is a luxury in Japan and this fact of life manifests itself in peculiar ways. The economic asset-inflated economy was ballooning in the 80s and the air inside was thick with the smell of wet pedigree pet feet running freely around the previously off-limit rooms. Shopping was the national pastime. There just were not enough hours in a day to buy what you wanted. The size of the average home didn't change much though. And the rooms filled up quickly with overly enthusiastic purchases.

This is how a few semi-gigantic Finnish and Swedish Looms (and I remember a Bangladesh monstrosity made from teak that broke my floorboards) eventually made it to this mountain village. Tokyo sneezed years after the bubble deflated had splattered it's over sized purchases to outlying areas with rooms to spare. Some ended up at the dump or dumped on someone.

"I hear you weave...my aunt bought a loom on a weaving course she took in Helsinki in the summer of 88... She can't remember how to use it and it is taking up a full eight tatami room. She is looking for a loving home for it."

They looked like a giant boogers of sorts, wrapped in mountains of funky Scandinavian cardboard and bubble wrap .

Two were then taking up precious space in one of my ten tatami rooms. For years and years. Students eyed them and queried about what could be made on them. Besides a few long hours spent looking at the possibilities on YouTube I had no concrete idea.

I learned to weave in Japan on very old broken down soot stained kimono looms. Basic plain weave. I focused on thread making from cocoons and natural dyes and not fancy weave constructions with tons of peddles and heddles.

The students curiosity and my embarrassing ignorance of these non-Japanese looms got the best of me. I set up a cashmere warp of indigo and kihada. A simple herringbone tweed in mind. Things got out of control very fast with wild peddling and multi colored weft rants. I am happy with the result and it is keeping me warm as I blog away on a drizzling December evening.

Indigo Water Dragon Scarves

2011-11-17T19:47:00.007+09:00

Two summers ago Kurihara san showed up several times at the old shop and asked if I was interested in making indigo dyed stockings with him. It wasn't that appealing and I was trying to be Japanese and just give him unenthusiastic answers and hope he would take them as a no. He persisted. He is 80 and retired but still has the huge tube knitting machines. He told me that he worked all his life on dying and knits and hunting down big orders. Now he wanted to do something enjoyable and different and not think about the bottom line. So he hunted me down and now we have been experimenting and playing with the possibilities this past year.

I was interested in doing some indigo knits. I often buy 45rpm indigo knit (a Japanese Maker) t-shirts and sweaters and cardigans. They are great but really pricey. I would have to learn to sew knits and design knits and learn knit thread weight. It seemed like too much but curiosity had me and I started dying threads and Kurihara san would knit them up for me on the 1950's American t-shirt knitter. I purchased a 50s four thread lock serger and started cutting and sewing. This is a lot of fun but with other more pressing commitments the piles of indigo dyed yardage started piling up. The shirts I was making were not really sellable. It will take a few years to learn to sew that well. The indigo faded slightly on the creases and in desperation I came up with the idea of water dragon scarves to reduce the piles of knit and prove my enthusiasm to Kurihara san. 2012 is the year of the dragon. (I was born in the year of the dragon so I should be having a good year in 2012) The dragon years are divided into wood dragons, metal dragons, fire dragons and water dragons. There are only two water dragon years in a century.

THE WATER DRAGON 1952 AND 2012

Water has a calming effect on the Dragon's fearless temperament. Water allows the Dragon to re-direct its enthusiasm, and makes him more perceptive of others. These Dragons are better equipped to take a step back to re-evaluate a situation because they understand the art of patience and do not desire the spotlight like other Dragons. Therefore, they make smart decisions and are able to see eye-to-eye with other people. However, their actions can go wrong if they do not research or if they do not finish one project before starting another.

(The last line makes me shiver...with so many projects on the go right now.)

The scarves are almost all silk and they look funky on anyone. I sew five or six diffent knits together and then dragon back down the edges with the lock-serger and braid/tie them up and stick the tail through the mouth. Selling well!

Harlequin Glorybower Dyer Season Again

2011-11-16T21:59:00.007+09:00

In early November the local mountains and cliffs supply Harlequin Glorybower berries that dye a Korean pine-ash glaze porcelain color with an aluminum mordant. With some watered-down gardenia pod dye-bath you can under-dye to get some fresh greens. A too vivid yellow gets you a truly obnoxious Exorcist barf fluorescent green.

The berries are best when they are dark blue and almost black but still juicy. Use a blender to pulverize them and then bring them to an almost boil. Stop before it bubbles to get a fresh color. It is tempting to use more mordant when dying with unstable berry dyes. The thread can get sticky with mordant when using this dye so go easy on it.

I wrote about Kusagi dying on my MONDAY, 12 OCTOBER, 2009 post if you would like to read it.

Indigo Stalks Dye Sublime Grey on Silk.

2011-11-16T21:15:00.007+09:00

After growing and dying with indigo for 19 years, you just about do everything possible with the stuff. But boiling the stems after stripping off the indigo pigment laden leaves and using that as a dye bath never happened.

A few weeks back, the mid afternoon shadows were already clammy and blackish and the coming cooler weather's pale fingers were just a few wool hairs away, almost brushing our shoulders as we stripped almost spiritless leaves off the indigo stalks.

Due to a few cool weeks in July only two harvests were possible. The pigment content was good and the plants healthy. Experimenting with fertilizer, two rows of plants with none. Two rows with a reasonable amount and two rows of complete overkill. Sadly, the fertilizer overkill rows were by far the strongest. The indigo field usually gets some locally produced dairy cow manure. It was too soon after the Fukushima nuclear accident to make any rational decision about the safety of manure and there was some old high-nitrogen chemical mulberry fertilizer gathering dust in the barn. (Raising silkworms in the early spring the mulberry is healthy enough with out it.)

The reddish stems in the stainless dye pot were as forlorn as we felt preparing them. And the resulting grey, brought to mind an overcast Canadian West Coast November walk at sundown near the water.. Gorgeous...and sublime.

Tsunamiland Workshops

2011-10-22T20:23:00.000+09:00

I have been up volunteering several times in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures over the past six months. Shoveling tsunami gunk, sifting sand in yards, carrying debris, washing everything, making food and delivering it. It is getting colder up north and I am busy with carpentry work at the house preparing for the spring tour so I could only squeeze in one last trip up there. I got back home this morning. (To find that Snoopy had fallen down the concrete river embankments and was trapped all night in the heavy rain on a miniscule shrinking island in the middle of the river near my house. She was soaked, shocked and delirious. I fell in the river pulling her out.)

The people living in temporary emergency housing places have had their houses and spouses and children and big parts of their lives washed away. The shock has worn off and as the days grow colder and less sunshine, dreary reality sinks in. It took some effort to arrange in advance four indigo workshops at some temporary emergency housing places. It was worth it to see some very happy faces. In Spring after the tour is finished I will try to go back and hold some more. They need fresh ideas for their fundraising bazaars. Something clever with indigo? I have six months to think about it.

PS: Snoopy is now dried out and fed and sleeping soundly on my bed as if it all hadn't happened.

Chestnut Hull Dying

2011-10-17T22:14:00.004+09:00

Autumn is here. The yuzu citrus on the trees are turning orange. Snoopy doesn't want to walk on her regular walking route this time of year because the road is littered with prickly chestnut hulls. She got pricked on her tender little paw bottoms years ago and won't forget that. (The damn monkeys scatter them all over the place.)
It is a shame not to follow the seasons. We picked up some hulls and squealed and yelped until they were boiled soft. Again we used old kimono lining with simple shibori.
I want the students to just get the process of mordants and boiling and what plant gets what color. Playing on this almost-free silk gives us the freedom to play without worrying about how to use the material. It is a shame when we get a beautiful color like this and we haven't dyed skeins of silk to weave. The moment of the season makes this process precious. There are still plenty of chesnuts around to re-do this one.

Should have written names on them.

2011-10-17T21:49:00.005+09:00

This usually happens with elementary school students. When all the excitement is over and the material is dry they can't remember who dyed what. I had a request for a one day free-for-all at the indigo vat. They loved it.

They also loved snooping around the house looking at tools and looms and going through boxes of natural dyed silk that have built up and asking what plant I had used. I had to wing a few....I should label and categorize.

There is still tons of un-dyed silk kimono lining out there in every Japanese grandma's dresser drawers. It is easily given a new life as rag-weave raw material. I had a pot of lac dye and another of gardenia pods ready and we threw in the old silk and played with iron and aluminum mordants and dips in the indigo to get these colors. You can see the results on the table. I often use this kind of silk to play with natural dyes. It can be used as casual scarfs.

Textile Friends

2011-10-17T21:25:00.006+09:00

I had Jo and Harold Skinner from Vancouver over for a few days recently. They were traveling around Japan and they dropped by for a visit. It was our fist face to face meeting but Jo and I have emailed back and forth and she went to Laos last year and met my good friends there.
We never shut up....I have few connections with Vancouver and it was wonderful to talk about the city. It was endless fun to talk about textiles and all things Japan.
To see some of Jo's wonderful work visit: http://www.silkweavingstudio.com/jo.html

Woven Shibori

2011-10-17T12:59:00.004+09:00

For all the weavers who want to try something new I recommend Catherine Ellis book, "Woven Shibori". She really has done a remarkable job researching and experimenting to the millionth degree the possibilities of 'weaving-in' the pull threads of shibori and the following surface dying .

Most of us Neanderthals have been painstakingly measuring and marking and stitching evenings away to get similar results. She shows us how to set our looms to get the stitching built in. It felt a little like seeing a "Ring-around-the-collar or 'Scrubbing Bubbles" or a 'Mr. Muscle your a good man to wake up to." ad for the first time. Too good to be true. But the results are in...and they work.

Music on Silk Crepe.

2011-09-27T21:22:00.010+09:00

Today the rice paste was used to resist the stencil pattern as usual but instead of indigo, I boiled down different dye baths from high tannic barks and red madder and used them with an iron mordant to get this effect. It was steamed to set the color.

Something about this reminds me of Pablo Casals playing Bach. The fabric is a perfect silk crepe. This stuff if usually too refined and snooty. How to build on the chilliness without nodding off is the question. It may not be a moody, bloody, passionate Cello Suite but it made us smile in a similar way.

Banana Stock Threads to Fabric: National Treasure

2011-09-26T19:19:00.011+09:00

The Okinawan islands are at the very southern tip of the Japanese archipelago. The islands are closer to Taiwan than the actual Japanese main islands. The climate is tropical and the customs and language quite different from the rest of Japan. The islands remained under American jurisdiction after world war two until 1972. The Okinawans have had it tough and still suffer living with huge American Military bases in their midst. Due to the strategic position of the islands it is doubtful that the military bases will be moved.

Kimono from this area has traditionally been made from the stalk of Banana plants. The woven textiles seem to have soaked in the sunshine and the hardship as well as the refinement and strength of the land and the Okinawans.

Taira Toshiko san grew up under the occupation and economically suffered most of her life. I've never met her but I have lifted a few inspirational patterns from her repertoire to use in my own weaving.

The process of making the threads is much like the traditional methods for making thread and weaving other plant fibers. The finished woven rolls of fabric are floated in the salt water to set the weave and color unlike their northern brethren which are laid to set on the cold frozen snow of the snowy regions of Japan. More or less Japan sits on a North-South Axis. The clothing tradition was enriched by the topographical and climate variations.

I would love to take a year off my busy life in the middle of Japan and head south to a slower paced life and study the Okinawan textiles. What a dream...

Living National Treasure: part two.

2011-09-14T21:23:00.002+09:00

Sorry for another semi used posting.

Ayano Chiba standing in her indigo field in winter.

Late 20s living in Japan, working as a English re-writer. Sitting by a fax machine in computer chip manufacturer while people handed me faxes in semi-broken English. I would patch up the English and fax away to the head office in the States. On the weekends I was studying Japanese ink painting and was getting orders to do paintings for interiors of Japanese restaurants. Every few months I would fly down to Java in Indonesia for a few weeks by myself and roam around. It was here I took a deeper look at the handwoven textiles from all the different islands of the archipelago. In villages I saw some women dying with indigo and natural dyes but it did not register exactly what they were doing or the significance of it. I took some batik courses and purchased ikats from over priced boutiques in Bali.

I was in a bookstore in Tokyo's Shinjuku one afternoon. I was looking for something. My bookshelves were overflowing with books and magazines on ink painting and pottery. I picked out the Shibori book by Yoshiko Wada, Mary Kellog Rice, and Jane Barton. I read a one page description of how Ayano Chiba the National Treasure planted her own indigo and processed it and dyed with it. I shut the book, snuffle chuckled and took it the cash register. 'OK. Now that the rest of my life is decided I can go have a beer.'

I was going to grow my own indigo and be an indigo craftsman. It seemed exactly right.

And I did. I got indigo seeds, grew, harvested and fermented exactly as was written in the book and dyed away.
Beginners luck I suppose. I have tried several ways to ferment the indigo leaves and the vat itself but I still do it the same way that Ayano Chiba did.

Her background set the criteria for what I figured a Living National Treasure should be. An anonymous person living in a backwater somewhere who had some skill that they had absorbed after a lifetime of working on it. She was doing it for the love of the process.

She was born in 1889 and passed away in 1980. She also grew hemp and processed it into threads by hand and wove it into kimono and then dyed the material. Her daughter carried on her work after her death.

I can see now that some Living National Treasures aim for the title and invest time and money in getting the status. They mostly deserve the recognition and it helps bring awareness to the value of culture to a country that often has it's priorities focused on surviving in this material society. There is a purity in Chiba san's compelling story though. Someone found her. She didn't go looking.

Paper and Cotton Knit Arashi Shibori

2011-09-13T20:20:00.008+09:00

The material is a tube knit of 30% paper and 70% cotton. We stitched it and pulled it and then pole wrapped it then pushed and twisted and dyed it with one dip in the indigo.

This will be made into a long-sleeved t-shirt.

Finishing up a Long Hard Weave

2011-09-13T20:07:00.007+09:00

Sato san is a tea ceremony teacher who also makes those great small bags for the tea ceremony utensils. I set up this indigo dyed linen warp on this back strap loom and she finished the two meter weave today. We are looking forward to see how she will use this precious cloth she labored over.

There are some great wooden pillars upstairs to tie the warp to. It is like a time slip up there at times when several students are weaving away.

The One Year Obi Project

2011-09-13T19:44:00.011+09:00

Kawamoto san and Kamei san started to make these obis (kimono belts) over a year ago.
First they decided the pattern and cut stencils. Then made the resist paste by steaming rice flour and bran. The pattern was dyed seven times in indigo to get the darker blue. (It is quite a feat to dye something that long and sticky with glue without making a mess!) The obi was then washed and dried and re-pasted with the stencil slightly shifted to give a lighter blue three dip shadow. The obi was washed again and slightly offset resist pasted again. By this time it was autumn last year and there were not enough ultra-violet rays (that are required to change the color) left in the sun so we had to wait for summer this year. It was dyed ten times with persimmon tannin and after each dye it was dried in the hot sun to get the golden brown .

Finally today we removed the paste and the results were worth the time and effort. It was a good study as well.Their faces lit up while discussing next years persimmon tannin indigo obi and the potentials to build on these techniques and aesthetics.

National Treasure.

2011-09-08T11:08:00.002+09:00

I posted this on the tour blog yesterday. I've been busy with house construction again. Sorry to those of you getting a semi-used post!

The Japanese government, with the goal of preserving important intangible cultural assets supports a system of 'Living National Treasures'. There are 16 categories in the performing arts and crafts: Gagaku, Noh, Bunraku, Kabuki, Kumi Odori, Music, Dance, and Drama Crafts: Ceramics, Textiles, Lacquerware, Metalworking, Dollmaking, Woodworking, Papermaking, and Miscellaneous Crafts. I met a textile one! Several times... I am certain she hated me. First of all I didn't realize at the time what a big deal being a Living National Treasure is. She is a friend of a friend and I heard she wanted to meet me. ( Instead of feeling honored I thought, "What kind of rinky dink system is this living treasure stuff?" (Treating people like Gods gives me the shivers actually.) So I went and met her. I was completely in awe of her work and dedication. At the time I was passionaltely raising silkworms and breeding different ancient varities. ( I would get the eggs from the Ministry of Agriculture to do research.) It was all pretty much straightforward stuff. My life was submerged in silk and figured that the Living National Treasure must have knowledge that would make anything I had picked up look like instant noodles.

Silk threads dyed with natural dyes and a patchwork kimono from scraps of her weaving by Shimura Fukumi. The atmosphere of the gallery was deadly respectful and mysteriously religious. Then the dumb ox Canadian who can't speak honorific and humble Japanese naturally, walks in bursting with technical questions on silk de-gumming. I really wanted to know how she did it. I was taught to burn some rice straw and do it with the ash alkaline. There she was standing like an un-approchable angel (Sounds like a Rolling Stones song) and with that spirit and curiosity overflowing I barraged her with technical questions. (I thought she was being coy not answering them. ) Then she did something I can't forget. I don't know if there is an actual word for this action. You pump a lot of air into the space between your front teeth and upper lip making it balloon out and you scowl in frustration at the same time and quiver slightly. It was a Forrest Gump moment. I had put her on the spot asking questions she couldn't answer in front of her peers. Instead of slunking away I made matters worse by a lousy English, "I'm sorry." I met her again a year later in a less formal setting and she was friendly but a little uneasy. I got it right the second time. I tried to look harmless and kept my mouth shut. She is almost 90 now. And she is not only a Japanese National Treasure but a treasure for all us humans on this planet. Immensely talented as a writer, a kimono designer, a natural dyer, a weaver and a teacher. Shimura Fukumi. She writes and writes and weaves and weaves. And many around her write about her and weave from her inspiration. A well-documented and very approachable angel. I will be certain to share as much as I can with the tour members what I know about her work.

Bryan

Small Bags for Precious Things

2011-08-29T18:38:00.011+09:00

Aoki san

The traditional Japanese house has no real walls. Just sliding doors partitioning rooms. There was always an alcove called a 'tokonoma' where some piece of art was put on display. A hanging scroll of calligraphy or a ink painting, a piece of pottery and perhaps a simple flower arrangement. Unlike a western house where we will keep the same painting on the wall indefinitely, they change the display all the time. I like having a long term relationship and conversations with the paintings and things I have picked up through travels and life in almost every wall and corner and surface in my house. Two different approaches to displaying art.

Here in Japan, many of my friends keep their treasures out of sight and display them occasionally. The objects storage container is important. They love wood boxes here. Boxes inside boxes and objects wrapped in cloth.
I spent some years going to a class on Sundays learning to make the small silk bags for tea ceremony objects. There are some very talented potters in my town and I have been blessed to have some of them as my good friends. I could write a few books on the subjects of the potters in my town and pottery in Japan. My house is awash with pottery.

I was particularly blessed to have known Ryo Aoki for 15 years. He passed away at 50 years old, seven years ago. What a treasure he was. I met him when I first came to Japan and he had just started pottery. He felt he was ten years behind and literally killed himself through hard work making up for his late start as a potter. He had a vision and he worked towards it steadfastly. He lived in the middle of the mountains in a barely standing ancient farmhouse and studio. He had built a climbing wood firing kiln and was fulfilling his life work. He fell down beside the kiln as it was firing, not realizing his fever was from a virus and not the heat from the kiln.

I often visited him over the years and somehow I managed to purchase and receive as gifts a comprehensive collection of his work. A few pieces he gave me as a present because they, " are works of genius I can't possibly put them in a gallery and put a price on them." (He was a humble guy who couldn't help but be overwhelmed by his own genius and hard work at times.)

I am deeply indebted to him. There are very few like him. He inspired me and set a standard very difficult to achieve. His life was his art. And this is where the source of the really good stuff comes from.

There was an exhibition of his work, that had sat cooling in the kiln as he slipped away from us, at the gallery in Tokyo where he often exhibited. The doors were stormed and the shelves were bare in minutes. I managed to grab a few pieces. One is this small sake bin.

Bittersweet...recently his work has been 'discovered' by a famous Japanese artist/curator and Aoki's work is now in demand and the prices skyrocketing.

I wanted to honor him and the sake bin and I finally got around to weaving this small piece of linen and put together this bag for it. The indigo dyed bamboo basket was made another local friend, Ishikawa san, who gets his bamboo from our area. I taught him to process indigo to dye bamboo. My house is awash in bamboo baskets as well.

I made this silk bag from my cocoons many years ago for a sake cup Aoki san made. (Photo below.)

Old Lost Friend

2011-08-23T21:55:00.004+09:00

Seo san and I worked together 15 years ago. She as the designer and seamstress and I as her indigo dying slave. We had a huge output for three years and don't regret a minute of it. Three years of producing shibori on a daily basis come rain, snow or sweltering heat put me through the boot camp of indigo dying/production. She used to bring out her grandchildren on weekends to play in the countryside while we worked. I hadn't seen Daiki in 14 years. He came out with her as a full- grown 18 year old yesterday and did some indigo dying today. It was great to meet him again. Like most 18 year olds he is wondering what he wants to do with his life. I suggested he become an indigo craftsman and live in Switzerland. He didn't dislike the idea at all. I found this old picture of him with Snoopy. Snoopy is aging the best I noticed!

White Shadow /Shirokage Fever Continues.

2011-08-23T21:51:00.004+09:00

The students all want to get it right. The right balance and the right cloth and of course the right amount of white in the background. I am impressed with their tenacity and the results. This kind of shibori is really a tough nut to crack.

Ogata san's 94th

2011-08-23T21:39:00.002+09:00

Ogata san turned 94 a few days back. Every Tuesday she comes to class and makes lunch for seven or eight of us. She brings most of the ingredients from her garden. Recently, tomatoes, peppers, blueberries, okra, potatoes and of course a handful of fresh seasonal flowers. We took her out for lunch today....we should have made her lunch from the food we grow.....sad state of affairs on our side.

Tour E-mail.

2011-08-22T18:33:00.003+09:00

Thank you all. I have received a small flood of e-mails concerning the spring tour. I have gotten back to a few personally and will write on a few more this evening and tomorrow in detail. Two different groups have said that the dates are not best for them. Unfortunately I have to keep these dates. My house is a three story farmhouse and the guest rooms are on the third floor. It is too hot and uncomfortable up there from June until October. I don't like to use air conditioning. April and October are really the right times to visit Japan. I will keep the workshops for guests from out of Japan in the best times of the year.

One e-mail inquired about a specific long course in silk thread reeling and dying. I will see how this general course in Japanese textiles works before deciding on more technique-specific workshops. Thank you again for the interest and I really get a lot from your questions and shows of interest. Feel free to ask about future plans.

Bryan

Textiles for Tea Ceremony

2011-08-21T19:30:00.005+09:00

These type of macrame (a Japanese word!) bags are used for three items in the tea ceremony. For a container that contains mini- sweets, for the container that contains the tea whisk and for the container tube-like container that contains the linen wipe cloth. This is my first attempt with some silk leftover from a previous project. Dyed with akane and walnut bark. I didn't expect it to work out at all the first try. Not bad though. I used a empty Saran Wrap tube instead of a round cork center. Next time will be easier and better.

Ko Kato

2011-08-21T19:01:00.001+09:00

Ko san and digging akane (madder) in his mulberry field.

I wrote this blog just a few days before the tsunami and nuclear meltdown. There was enough bad news going around so it has sat in my blog edit pile for these past months.

I am very grateful to Minako and Ko Kato who live in a village on the other side of my town. 17 years ago I showed up at their front door and in poor Japanese I asked to see the silk kimono rolls she wove from the silk her family produces. Minako took me to their old clay storehouse and I watched as she opened some drawers and took out some hand woven rolls of naturally dyed hand spun and reeled silk. I took a good look at them and stood up straight and thanked her. In less than one minute the rest of my life had been decided. I was going to learn the processes and make my own silk and weave it. I needed to speak Japanese. I hit the textbooks and cassette tapes and in five months I was back on their doorstep asking them to teach me (in a more advanced state of broken Japanese) all about silk farming, thread making, old weaving looms and tools .

We became good friends over the years. I did need basic Japanese to communicate but our relationship built on years and years of non-verbal communication. Spending hundreds of hours threading and warping looms, digging dyestuffs and sharing time enjoying the lengthy processes brought us close together.

Sadly, Ko passed away last week at 93. The family called and I went over to their house and helped prepare for the funeral. In the country they still bring the body back to the house for a few days. He looked peaceful sleeping on his futon dressed in a white cotton kimono.

Yesterday the buddhist priest came and it was time to take him away to the crematorium. The family members and friends help dress him and prepare him for the seven day journey to the next world. He needs some cute white silk shoes. Some white silk leg protectors to keep the mud off his legs. A bag around is neck with six coins to pay for the ferryboat to the other side. A bag in case he receives any presents along the way. A walking stick because the path is hard. Some straw sandals to walk in. (The ties are cut though in case his ghost decides to come back thus making it impossible to really walk in them.) The coffin was filled with things he liked. Some sake. Some books.

Minako asked me to help her cover him with a beautiful indigo dyed kimono she had woven for him many years ago. She said to him, " Remember this one old guy? You raised the silk cocoons and I wove this for you. It is for you."

Then the coffin was filled with flowers and we drove to the crematorium. It takes about an hour to finish there. The temperature is kept quite low so that the ancient tradition of loved ones picking up the bones together with chopsticks can continue.

He taught me many things about mulberry cultivation and silk farming. I spent many afternoons listening to his stories of the war and the self sufficient ways of the old days. ( He would set a fish trap on the way to elementary school and bring the fish back home after school for the family to eat.) I suppose one bond between us was that the three of us knew very well that life in that simpler time was far more sophisticated and enjoyable. I miss him.

Thoughts on Teaching Weaving. Part One

2011-08-18T19:55:00.003+09:00

When I opened Japanese Textile Workshops at my house I had no real idea of where I would draw the boundaries on what I would teach or who I would teach to. I started with a few looms, a few indigo vats, a large collection of silk reeling tools and kumi himo stands and a lot of knowledge of Japanese textiles I had picked up over many years.

In the back of my mind I wanted to teach how to make high quality small pieces of textile using different techniques that could be used for the tea ceremony. My students get a chance to do everything. Help raise silkworms, reel cocoons, throw the raw silk and de-gum it, use vegetable dyes to color it and make bags and belts and eventually kimono. That would be more than enough but the worlds of stencil dying and shibori with indigo are too much to overlook.

The students who approach me to study all have different goals and different lack-of-goals I have to consider. Somehow it all works out as they grow as textile people and I grow as textile teacher.

I use back strap looms to introduce weaving to my students. At first I set an entire loom up and they simply weave two meters. The second time around they indigo dye the thread. Think of the pattern and set the loom up themselves. For any one out there considering teaching weaving this is something to consider. The students do not need to put out a large sum on looms and other tools when they are uncertain if weaving is what they really want to do. They can take the looms home and weave homework. I teach how to make the bamboo reeds and heddles. They make their own back strap pillow part of the loom from their first weavings. The shuttles are made by a neighbor from local wood.

Stencil Dye / Katazome New Direction

2011-08-18T19:13:00.014+09:00

Eri has focused on indigo dying, stencil dying and shibori. I was lucky to have a whole class with her alone on Tuesday to talk and see where she would like to go with her time at the studio. She brought in a beautiful detailed stencil she had cut for homework. Small circular stained glass like motifs that seemed Taisho period influenced. (1920s Japan)
First we lacquered on a silk net to enforce the stencil. This is tricky work. It has taken me years of practice to get it right. The key operating words to success are 'slowly' and 'carefully' and 'very patiently'.

When we got the net fixed on the stencil Eri asked if it was possible to use the stencil with other colors besides indigo. I had secretly been dreading the day this inevitable question would come. It opens up an entire new time consuming world. As we usually use hemp or cotton with indigo to use vegetable dyes entails impregnating the cloth with soybean milk before dying. A protein is needed to bond the color pigment and the metallic salt to the cloth. I know that once the other students see the potential of this technique they will all want to do it. The lid is off now.
To make a rambling blog short, this is what we came up with. Lac dye mordanted with aluminum and steamed to fix. Re pasted with rice paste and double dipped in indigo. There are a lot of possibilities just with this color combination.

Indigo Drying on the Metal Kitchen Roof.

2011-08-17T17:35:00.007+09:00

This is the 19th year I have dried indigo on this dangerous roof. It has proven to be the best way. Fast and efficient. The freshly dried warm indigo has a smell like nothing else. Last year a friend mentioned that the drying indigo had a unique unmistakable smell. I agreed with a flubbed wisecrack....'I love the smell of drying indigo in the afternoon...it smells like....victory.' It was a weak take on Kilgore's famous lines in Apocalypse Now..."I love the smell of napalm in the morning...smells like...victory."

I was up at the crack of dawn and at the indigo field harvesting my first cut this year. The faster it dries the better. The weather looks like it will change on Saturday so this might be the last chance. I've had semi-dried leaves on electric carpets and fans and heaters blazing on hot muggy days trying to salvage an ill-timed harvest in the past. The roof never lets me down except the climb up there and the scorching heat are tough.Today was dry and breezy and in the mid 30s. Perfect for an indigo harvest. Half of the leaves were stripped off the stems so that the stems can be boiled and used for a silver grey regular vegetable dye. The other half was dried on the kitchen roof to be later fermented into ammonia strong indigo paste.

The smell triggered something. I don't have the time to be absorbed by melancholic and meaningful memories like Proust, but I had a flash forward to what might happen years from now if I stumbled upon some drying indigo leaves. It could trigger and avalanche of memories of indigo processing. Here is the most indulgent thing I've asked of my blog readers...

Il y avait déjà bien des années que, de Combray, tout ce qui n’était pas le théâtre et le drame de mon coucher n’existait plus pour moi, quand un jour d’hiver, comme je rentrais à la maison, ma mère, voyant que j’avais froid, me proposa de me faire prendre, contre mon habitude, un peu de thé. Je refusai d’abord et, je ne sais pourquoi, me ravisai. Elle envoya chercher un de ces gâteaux courts et dodus appelés Petites Madeleines qui semblaient avoir été moulées dans la valve rainurée d’une coquille de Saint-Jacques. Et bientôt, machinalement, accablé par la morne journée et la perspective d’un triste lendemain, je portai à mes lèvres une cuillerée du thé où j’avais laissé s’amollir un morceau de madeleine. Mais à l’instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d’extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m’avait envahi, isolé, sans la notion de sa cause.

And in case you plowing through that is a headache..

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

Japanese Textile Study Tour at My House Next Spring.

2011-08-13T01:30:00.003+09:00

With little to no fanfare I present what Nat and I have put together: http://japanesetextilestudytour.blogspot.com/

Holiday Photos

2011-08-13T01:01:00.009+09:00

I returned last night from my summer vacation up in Iwate Prefecture. I visited and volunteered putting together Obento lunch boxes and delivering them to the different temporary housing sets in and around Ofunato and Rikuzentakata. No shortage of sadness and devastation on physical and mental planes up there.

The people living in the temporary housing 'towns' have tough lives. They have had their entire lives swept away by the tsunamis. There has been a good outpouring of sympathy for the Tohoku people. One photographer from Tokyo travels up to the are and takes portraits of the families living there. Many of the women haven't had a chance to take care of themselves and he brought a few beauticians to cut hair and assist with makeup etc.

It was re-assuring to see their smiling faces as someone pampered them after all the hell they have been through. This little princess in a summer kimono was a real charmer. Her brother joined her on the white eternity set after her photo shoot.

One evening we drove to a festival. Three of the four shrines were washed out to sea. One survived and was set up amongst the wreckage and the festival was held in defiance of the surrounding devastation.

These guys are fishermen. The tattoo-like material of their shirts is simply gutsy and cool.

This fellow was a drummer...he showed me his bleeding hands... I asked him about the tsunami and he sadly told me his Mother had been washed out to sea. His red Happi coat was simply great. You can see the destroyed city of Rikuzentakata in the background.

Arrow Stencil Obi

2011-08-13T00:40:00.009+09:00

Santa went shopping at the Swiss Antique Market across the Rhine River and picked out a particularly solid roll of antique cotton. (Thank you Barbara for showing him the way.) Not wasting any time I started cutting out a stencil of flowing arrows the next evening.

The cloth was pasted and stenciled and dipped six times in the indigo. Then washed and iron and re-pasted with the stencil slightly offset and dipped twice to get a lighter shadow. The third time around the stencil was shifted more and dyed with persimmon tannin ten times. The red color came from the pigment I put in the paste to make it more visible when shifting and re-pasting.
The fourth time around I carved out a different wave pattern stencil and more persimmon dying. You can see it clearly as the reflective area below.

It was stitched up as an obi for a summer kimono.

White Shadow/ Shirokage Shibori

2011-08-13T00:23:00.009+09:00

There has been a bit of shirokage fever in the class recently. The technique works better on a yukata weight fabric where it can be drawn tight. With heavier cloth we have had to individually stuff each white section with floss silk. Takeshima san succeeded today in keeping a white background with a few innovations not found in the 'how to' books.

I rummaged through a box to dig out this shirokage kimono I dyed 17 years ago..pardon the wrinkles. The lines were faint and delicate but the balance of the squares with the kimono itself was off. They should have been slightly smaller.

Some images of stitched and tied white shadow shibori.

Visitors to the Lotus

2011-07-27T18:41:00.004+09:00

The lotus are blooming outside the front door now. Nine blooms this year. I've had three special guests the past few days. The mori ao gaeru( Japanese green forest frog) is an endagered species. I have a huge tank behind the clay storehouse next to the stream for the adults to lay the huge foaming egg sacks in the trees high above. They fall into the water and the tadpoles are relatively safe there for the few months it takes to grow legs. Their croaks are especially charming. (Imagine a frog imitating a woodpecker on a tin wall with a hoarse throat.) This handsome fellow just wanted to get as close as possible to the most fragrant beautiful spot in the entire valley. He cuddled right in there with his eyes closed, stoned out his mind on heavenly lotus fragrance.

White Shadow/ Shirokage shibori

2011-07-27T18:28:00.002+09:00

Eri made the tremendous amount of effort to try white shadow/shirokage shibori.
The cloth was some heavyish linen I picked up in Austria at an antique market. It wasn't best suited to this type of shibori as it it thick and doesn't bind up tightly to keep the indigo out. So instead of a pure white shadow, a light blue shadow was the result. None the less, the results were unique and beautiful. The stiching was done in alternating black and white heavy thread so it is easier to see what you are pulling and tying. You really need to pull hard to bind the cloth and if the thread breaks you can't really re-stitch it perfectly. Cutting the threads after dying is also a major task. It seems that it was worth the effort as four other students asked to learn white shadow the following week. Yamaguchi san is a new student and her very first shibori attempt is this advanced technique.

Silkworm Eggs Hatch

2011-07-13T10:01:00.007+09:00

The eggs hatched far before their autumn arrival date . Grrrr. So there is another batch of silkworms finishing off the mulberry field leftovers. These will provide moths and eggs for next spring. The eggs will go in the fridge soon after being laid to prevent hatching this time. Less than a thousand silkworms so not that much work. The weather is hot now and they are growing fast. The mulberry must be picked before six in the morning to be fresh. Dew on my jeans and fresh early morning air... feels like you could live forever on this alone.

The clear eggs are the already hatched ones. The babies are one millimeter long. They will grow ten thousand times this size in twenty eight days. And then make cocoons.

Creamy Yellow Mulberry Root Dye

2011-07-12T22:33:00.009+09:00

With several hundred mulberry saplings made over the past few years taking up too much space it was time to put some to use now. Some were made from berries. These revert to a wilder type of mulberry and I use the strong base to graft on a good variety in early spring. I have a hundred or so of these saplings and used 30 for a dyestuff today.

The creamy yellow was too good to not take to a higher level. The indigo vat is in very good condition and I can get a dark blue on a single dip right now, effectively erasing the under dye of yellow. To get a lighter blue, take out two liters of liquid from the indigo vat and mix it with four liters of water. Mix it vigorously to introduce a lot of oxygen almost 'killing' it. Then you can over dye a pale blue on the pale yellow. Of course it doesn't dye evenly.This silk is headed for the knitting machine and the irregularities in the dye will turn out just fine in knit.

To get even a finer, lighter green put a handful of indigo leaves in the mixer , filter out the leaf matter, add some lime and a pinch of hydro sulphate. Kawamoto san over dyed her beautiful mulberry root dyed silk scarf the freshest of fresh willow green.

Eggs for Autumn

2011-07-04T20:12:00.001+09:00

Just some images of last weeks work.

Cocoon Reeling Season

2011-07-04T19:59:00.004+09:00

Imai san is a new student who quickly dove into the world of silk reeling. It was also En sans first time to reel cocoons. I was so impressed how clean and perfect all the students reeling work was. Poor Yamaguchi san... after a hard day of reeling a perfect skein of silk her cat took a fancy to it......

I taught them to reel ten cocoons and later we can combine five or six of these to get a warp thread for a kimono. It would be wonderful for each student to reel 2500 cocoons and vegetable dye and weave their own kimono. We could all have a very interesting exhibition in a good gallery in Tokyo. Hmmmm. Good idea. We should be ready in about two years.

Indigo Knit

2011-07-04T19:44:00.002+09:00

Here is a first attempt at indigo knit. The thread here is stocking grade mercerized cotton. It was very fine, so I threw four treads after dying them. The knitting machine was imported to Japan the late 1950s and still in use. Originally it was a t-shirt fabric knitter. This is a new world for me and it looks like fun. Silk thread, paper thread.... trying something new every week. Perhaps by autumn there will be some new products in the shop. The stripes are a bit too much...

Dying with Stick Lac, Indigo and Gardenia

2011-06-14T21:54:00.008+09:00

I dyed two scrappy pieces of silk many years ago as an experiment. They looked like a a cross between a giant octopus hickey attack and a major roadkill of a tribe of tree frogs. A weird aesthetic and both scarves met the same fate. Taken off my neck still warm and not given back. 'Name your price. I am not giving it back...'

I miss them and decided to try to make new ones. The silk this time was slightly different and it didn't come out exactly like before. The green is too peacocky so it is time to try again. Ogata san helped out today painting on the Lac. Then the whole piece is steamed in this contraption for an hour to set the dye. Then the red rings are wrapped and resisted and then dyed brilliant yellow with gardenia pods. The whole thing is untied and retied with smaller rings and then dyed in indigo.

I picked up some stick lac when while working in North Laos five years ago and am finally using it. It is tough to dye with. Steaming is the only sure way to fix the color permanently and deeply.

Lac dye is a natural reddish dyestuff extracted from
stick lac which is a secretion of the insect Coccus laccae
(Laccifer lacca Kerr). The insect C. laccae is often found
in South and Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand and
India. In Thailand, the lac insect grows most commonly
on the Rain tree,

Blog Follower Visits

2011-06-14T21:38:00.005+09:00

I was lucky that Nat http://notjustnat.blogspot.com/ and her good friend Ayako were able to spare a day and make it out to my house after the silk tour in Japan was over. The indigo was in good condition and we never shut up the entire day. ( I noticed she posted a similar picture on her blog only seconds ago.) Thank you for the kind words Nat. I hope we meet again.

Ogata san Makes a Healthy Comeback

2011-06-07T22:17:00.006+09:00

Ogata kane san has been taking my indigo and weaving class for five years now. She started when she was a young 88 years old. Now she is 93. She fell down the stairs at her house last winter and hasn't been to class in five months. She came back today.

She has a flower and vegetable garden at her house and still climbs up the mountain by herself to dig bamboo sprouts. She grows just about everything in the Japanese diet. She cooks for us all each Tuesday in my kitchen using vegetables and fruits she grows herself. She still hand-tills the land herself! Our lunch table is often adorned with some flowers from her garden. An inspiration to us all.

Today she started back threading the tabletop loom I found on Yahoo auction for her right where she left off last fall. And she found her internal-male-teenager with this space oddessy mind trippy indigo tablecloth she indigo dyed.

Eri watched as I showed Ogata san the technique and tried it out on a piece of natural brown cotton. It is more rustic and somehow astrological. She immediately started a new one to improve on the first one. Good spirit.

Images of Silkworms Spinning

2011-06-05T21:56:00.004+09:00

(Click to enlarge)

Silkworms Spring 2011

2011-06-05T20:57:00.016+09:00

Most of the silkworms are now cocoons now. Some late bloomers still munching away on mulberry. The eggs hatched two weeks early and the weather is unseasonably chilly this year. The rainy season started a few weeks early as well. This meant keeping kerosene heaters burning for several weeks to keep the silkworms happy. The silkworms on the top three shelves started spinning a full two days earlier than their brethren on the lower shelves. This threw a bit more chaos into the system of getting 3500 (estimate) crawling critters from the rearing trays to the spinning cardboard frames. But the system in the chaos and the chaos in the system played out well enough.

A and B grade cocoons were separated and sold from the farmhouses for hundreds of years in Japan. The cocoons that were irregular in shape, making them hard to reel single filaments were rejects and the farmer's wife would use them to weave kimono for her family. These kimono are the real treasures. Infinitely more charming and warm than the city slick perfection of their urban relatives. Often two silkworms would become entangled and spin a double cocoon. These cocoons can be reeled a special way to get a shiny slab like thread.

This year's cocoons are going to become a single men's kimono and obi belt. The threads will be made three different ways for this project.

First: Fine threads made from reeling ten cocoons and then combining six of these threads to get a perfectly smooth lustrous warp thread.

Second: The above mentioned double cocoon (tamamayu ito) thread will be used every third or fourth thread of the warp for texture.

Third: Cocoons will be melted in a straw ash liquid and then stretched into floss and then hand spun for a soft weft thread.

To make the double cocoons you need some real perseverance. A silkworm will loosely spin and outside frame for the cocoon leaving a space to stick out it's tail. Then it gets rid of waste alkaline water and pulls it's tail back in and continues to spin it's cocoon for three days. The trick is to pull the silkworm out of it's slightly formed cocoon at this stage and put it in a box with another silkworm at the exact same stage and cover it with glass so they can't escape and hopefully they will spin a cocoon together. Very tricky timing. And they get kind of smushed faces when you put the glass on while they are trying to escape.

The pictures are a little confusing but you should get the idea.

It is impossible not to anthropolize the whole process. Forcefully putting two silkworms in a small frame forcing them to make a single cocoon
without even knowing their compatibility, sex...or if silkworms have a sexual preference...or even gender issues...or astrological compatibility. (Although they were all born within a few hours of each other.)

Fate throwing them two together until death do them part in the boiling water that awaits them. Some just refuse to have anything to do with each other and make two separate squished cocoons. One may die in the process making a complete mess of the others attempt at cocoon spinning.

The anthropolizing was truly getting out of hand today as I was playing evil roles of investment banker and the worms my helpless victims of my greedy investment schemes. If Paulson and Bernanke were silk farmers what would their roles be in relation to the helpless but potentially profitable silkworms? OK OK. Too much work on double cocoons. Time for bed.

Gardenia Pods Brilliant Yellow.

2011-06-05T20:21:00.006+09:00

Gardenia pods in a stainless pot before boiling.

Gardenia pods that form once the flowers are finished are a stable source of a brilliant yellow dye for under-dying indigo to get greens. Boil them and smush them against the side of the pot with an egg flipper. Filter the liquid through a fine mesh and repeat four times to get a deep orange dye bath.

I mordant it in a separate bucket with creme of tarter instead of aluminum.

A basic rule of thumb for using vegetable dyes is to use four times the weight (of the wool or silk to be dyed) of the dyestuff material. (ie. roots or bark or flowers) Some dyes are so pigment-rich the ratio can be reversed. 500 grams of gardenia pods can easily dye 2kg of silk. The gardenia pod yellow is brilliant with a slight orange hint. The greens you can get with successive indigo dips are unique to gardenia. Other yellows from turmeric , onion skins, pampas relatives, etc, give their own specific tone of green. Like oil painting, greens are often tricky to use. In nature they are beautiful. They feel a little sickening when humans play with them. There is a tendency to get puke, snot or mucus like shades.

Yellow dye from gardenia pods and single indigo dip to get the green.

Shades of green with an single or double dip in indigo.

These greens are a tad nauseous but they will be combined with a light blue thread and then knit on a drum knitter to make heavy stretch t-shirt material. Eventually to become cardigans etc to sell in the shop. The silk is from waste slab. It doesn't dye that well with indigo as it streaks. This will be hidden in the knit. (hopefully)

Snoopy, Silkworms and Animal Feeder's Portrait

2011-06-01T19:56:00.004+09:00

In the first picture I blinked and looked like a dork and Snoopy looked wonderful. In the second picture, I didn't blink but Snoopy stuck her tongue out on purpose. The silkworms just sat there expressionless.

Kao Nashi / No Face

2011-06-01T19:30:00.011+09:00

In the old days my neighbor told me that there would sometimes be a single silkworm amongst ten thousand that did not have the markings on it's forehead. Children would look for these rare kaonashi oddities.

This year for some Mendelic reason, half have faces (actually markings on their upper backs) and half are white with no markings at all.

In the Studio Ghibli masterpiece, Sen to Chihoro/Spirited Away, one of these characters showed up at a hot spring for the myriad of Japanese Gods. He ate and ate and grew and grew and then suddenly vomited a tsunami of debris in the bath. The symbolism, like Chihiro's own parents who gorged themselves into pigs was intentional. I wonder what message Miyazki Hayao was making? Like a silkworm, Japan has grown because it consumes endlessly? The vomit is the garbage of daily life that surrounds us? Contemporary Japanese society was built on the invested income of silk exports to the USA in the early 20th century.

Maybe I read too much into this. Perhaps he just hates silk for some unknown reason.

My silkworms are starting to spin this evening. A month sure goes fast. The mulberry field is almost bare. They have eaten several hundred kg from that particular field in the last week. It is still spring and it hadn't grown that much. If they didn't start spinning today I would be searching for good mulberry tomorrow. It is starting to berry and during that time the leaves are slightly smaller and I suspect slightly less nutritious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEmEwUzIRfs&feature=related

Dying with Japanese White Oak.

2011-06-01T19:08:00.009+09:00

On the way back from picking students up at the station the road was blocked by the city workmen cutting trees that were tangled in the power lines. I noticed that one of the trees cut was a Japanese White Oak. (shirogashi) Since there was no room in the car Takeshima san held the branches out the window and we drove on.

With an iron mordant we got these steel dove grays using the bark, small branches and leaves. Each kind of silk took the dye differently. Takeshima san under dyed some heavy crepe silk. The following week she tried several shibori techniques.

Suffering Students

2011-05-29T20:55:00.003+09:00

I wanted the students to start weaving fine material from the start. No heavy wool winter scarves. Here is Takeshima san's first object woven on a traditional takabata. She suffered through this one. But it turned out beautiful. Just beautiful.

Indigo dyed linen.

Naoko's Shibori

2011-05-29T20:16:00.006+09:00

Recently students have been producing some wonderful shibori pieces. I did so much shibori ten years ago that I simply burned out not realizing that for students it is new and exciting territory. Here Naoko and her five wonderful Kai kens (with Madam Snoopy) patiently untie some Katano shibori.

And here she produced a wonderful hinode shibori variation.

Woodgrain with background pattern Shibori recipe.

2011-05-29T17:39:00.007+09:00

Here are three photos and it is quite easy to figure out how the pattern is created. Wet the cloth before pulling and tying the threads. Pull some tight leave others loose. One centimeter between the lines. Use disappearing aobana pen to draw the lines. You can make a more refined pattern, I've been out of the Shibori loop for a while. Dye and oxydize it 15 times with indigo in good condition.

Mulberry Book.

2011-05-29T17:03:00.011+09:00

A good friend, Kuwahara gave me this book a few weeks back. Samples of mulberry samples from all of Japan. Neatly pressed and categorized by an industrious student in the late 1950's.
When I asked him why he was in possession of such a book he grinned sheepishly....My last name is 'Kuwahara...Mulberry Field' in English.

I've been making mulberry saplings the past few years from seed or cuttings with various degrees of success. The saplings from seed tend to go back to a primitive variety from the hybrid. Perhaps 75% are true copies of the parent tree. I'll try a splice technique next spring. My old-timer next door neighbor says he can get berry-free nutrient high varieties every try.

Of course the downer this year is the cesium that has made it 250 km from the three melted down nuclear reactors in Fukushima. I harvest several hundred kg of organic green tea from my fields each spring. The government tested it two weeks ago. 400 milliservents of Cesium... The legal limit is 500. I sold this delicious tea at my shop and to friends in Europe over the past years.

I can't be that cynical to sell it or give it away after the nuclear meltdowns. I am just harvesting and throwing it away before processing it.

I help the older villagers cut their tea and bring it to the factory to be processed. The beauty of the mountains in spring and the excitement of the harvest tamp down the blues and I forget that I am potentially handling some carcinogenic nightmare. Who can set the standards for radiation safety? Nuts. Gallows humor as we cut and sort the fresh tea leaves. I doubt it will sell this year as the news has covered the cesium issue in detail. 400 is safe...500 is dangerous....

My tea terraces from my office window.

How is this Cesium effecting the mulberry and the silkworms? Usually taking pride in serving the finest leaves to silkworm guests, it is a mixed emotional feast-giver mentality this year. (Did someone sneeze on the salad in the kitchen???) Cesium has a half-life of 30 years. It is sucked up from the ground and concentrates in the leaves. If the leaves fall down and compost the cycle repeats itself. With the tea I will trim back deeply and throw the branches in the adjoining cedar forest. Hopefully this will dramatically reduce the cesium and in a few years there will be no trace of radiation on the tea.

As for the mulberry, I will feed it all to the silkworms and hope here is no effect on the worms or god-forbid the actual silk itself. (A radioactive hand spun kimono....wonderful.) Usually the silkworm by-products are used as fertilizer.

Nuclear energy is not safe. What a bloody nightmare this is. There is going to be a bloody nuclear reactor in every neighborhood on the planet unless these profitable monsters and the profit seeking operators are confronted and stopped. Alternative renewable energy sources needed to be developed and used.

Tea Harvest with friends and neighbors.

I thought I was in the exact place in universe where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I am doing. (Sounds a little Oprahish...now that I write it.) But now the wonderful present of a pressed mulberry sample book sits slightly mockingly on the table.

Time to get a Geiger counter.

Uninvited guests

2011-05-29T16:21:00.014+09:00

....about 5000 of them. Camped out in my living room and always hungry. (With Snoopy the Silkworm Guard Queen on duty.)

This year is my 15th anniversary of silkworm raising and it seemed reasonable to take a year off as a reward for 15 years of hard work. There are a few thousand unreeled cocoons in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator from last year serving as a stock for reeling demonstrations. There are many kg of silk thread produced from home grown silk cocoons upstairs waiting to be dyed and woven.

Although the mulberry field is in prime condition and it would be a waste not to feed it to something I truly wanted to take a break and use the extra month to work.

Last autumn I purposely did not breed any moths for eggs this spring just in case my parental instinct kicked in as the fresh mulberry leaves open and drink up a light spring rain. Break time. The house construction is not finished. The shop eats up weekends. Too many projects on hold and radiating some guilt kryptonite as I walk through the house and garden. "Finish me...don't forget me... " 2011 was to be the year of no silkworms. Finish up projects and take it slow. No luck.

A month back, Matchan a painter friend showed up at the shop...."What should I do!!!! The eggs hatched and I am too busy to look after them!!!! Help!!"

I had given Matchan a dozen silkworms last year to raise and use as models for a painting. He had let the moths naturally mate and ended up with about 5000 eggs on some newspaper. In his warm painting studio they had hatched.

You can see his cute illustration of this year's silkworm's parents on the object wall in the kitchen.

It is unseasonably cool this year and the only room I can efficiently heat is the living room. They woke up yesterday from their final sleep and are devouring mulberry as fast as I can cut it. There is a typhoon on us now and cutting mulberry in the wind and rain.....wonderful.

Thinking back on all these years at all the adventures (and misadventures) with the whole silk producing processes. It really should get written it down. Something as mundane as silkworms has filled a good part of life's memories with images and emotions. Silver-blue-chilly-dewed early mornings, sweltering hot midnights or a New Year holidays spent in solitude pruning back bare branches in a desolate dry mulberry field.

Love Shibori

2011-05-12T16:25:00.000+09:00

A 21 year old guy originally from Siberia was coming and staying at my place regularly pre-tsunami/meltdown. Sergei. He studied Permaculture in Australia and wanted some practical farming experience. He asked if I had some work around my house needed done in exchange for bed and food. (An angel appeared I thought. ) He came out and cut bamboo on the mountain behind my place dramatically opening up some sky space for me. The bamboo looks great so I never thought of cutting it and failed to notice how it had grown in the past 20 years.
He quickly became interested in the indigo vat and all the wonderful things my students were making. He is in love with his Japanese girlfriend Chiaki. Sure enough Cupid had him madly making shibori presents for her. (The power of love....) Here is his first attempt and it turned out beautiful. I always pick up antique Swiss and Austrian Linen at antique markets when I am in Europe. It dyes beautifully. When going to so much work to make something I figure the cloth should be very good from the start.

Was he glowing with happiness from the indigo work or the happiness of making something for his love?

Like many non-Japanese who live here he left suddenly with the reactor meltdown happening only a few hundred km away. Smart move as new trickles out about the severity of the damage. I hope he returns to Japan with Chiaki when it is safer.

blog gears about to start...

2011-05-10T20:40:00.007+09:00

I was up in Miyagi prefecture shoveling tsunami gunk and muck for a while.

I am back at home busy with Spring. My indigo seedlings will need transplanted to the field next week. I have 3000 baby silkworms who need constant feeding and care.

My tea harvest starts next week. The carpentry work upstairs has almost ground to a halt while weeding and cutting grass at the mulberry field and cleaning up the garden and yard are priorities. I put in a few new glass windows today so that I don't get too far away from the renovations.

My students are all working away at indigo and weaving projects. My precious Mac G5 needed a new hard drive and internal disk player. She was down for a month and now back up and ready to cooperate with getting my blog gears engaged.

Thank you to all who sent their kind words of encouragement since the tsunami and nuclear accident. They were much appreciated.

Bryan

Back in Fujino

2011-04-04T20:55:00.002+09:00

I am not that keen on keeping up my blog these days. The cherry blossoms are out and I returned home although the situation with the Fukushima nuclear reactors is far from stable. Radiation has been registered in my town. My most precious things are boxed and and my suitcase is near the front door ready to leave if things get worse. (Could they actually?) Suspicious of food and even if my shower water is not radiating the hell out of me. (Actually I will be away for a while to cool my own spent fuel and will be back on the bloghorse in May.)

My head is like the bloody reactors these days. Impossible to shut down and ready to burn up at any moment. The anger at Tokyo Electric Company 'TEPCO' for their inane company structure keeping my own critical fission point peaking. 25 million people living with in 500 km of the plants and a precious 1500 year old culture that could have significant parts of it radiated away.

Spain supplies 35% of it's electrical needs with renewable powers sources why are we building more of these reactors? (Because they are profitable and people are addicted to brightness and convenience.) Our societies are on the wrong path.

I did plant thousands of indigo seeds today as well as replanted my lotus pots. My friends and neighbors continue life as usual with a large dose of gallows humor to keep desperation at bay.

Anger.....I don't want any anger management right now. I hope more people get very angry and re think the man made part of this nightmare in Japan right now.

And I get my March electric bill today... Can't wait to pay those b******s.

Thank you all for your kind words

2011-03-13T18:36:00.002+09:00

On Friday I was having a regular weaving indigo open house workshop at my house. The lights dimmed and flashed and went out. I immediately sensed the worse as I know our town's power is supplied by a nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The house then started to roll more than actually shake. I've been through many earthquakes here and this one felt different. Not in size as the epicenter was far north but in quality. I quickly got my three students outside and away from the house. (Thank you Takeshima san for having the presence of mind to switch off the kerosene heater.) Outside the ground rolled and my tea field across the valley actually warped before my eyes.

The power was off for 12 hours. The trains were down and my students stranded in my town. Thank you Ogata san for cheerfully cooking and keeping us as light hearted as possible as news filtered in. We all have friend's and family in the area of the epicenter and in true Japanese form they remained polite and calm.

Now we have the specter of nuclear meltdown only several hundred km away. Not the lightest hearted weekend I've spent. The unmeasurable misery and pain happening only several hours north keeps my own inconvenience in perspective. Just in case, I decided to take a short trip south last night on a late local train. The wind would blow the radioactive cloud out to sea but there is the chance that it could come over my place. I am open to most new experiences but i will pass on this. So I am holed up in a crummy hotel in the Japanese Alps trying to keep up on the unfolding events taking place at the nuclear facilities. This particular facility has had it's management replaced before for faking documents on safety reports. This coupled with a 40 year old 15 cm metal casing holding in all that radiation...as my good friend Luc would say, "Shaitza Pooch"

Kato Ko

2011-03-03T19:55:00.006+09:00

Camel Carpets

2011-02-11T21:03:00.006+09:00

There is a Japanese woman living in central Japan. She weaves wonderful goat hair carpets. I've been meaning to purchase one for years. It would mean a few hour drive and then a agonizing decision over which one to get. I was shocked to find out that she has stopped weaving them last fall. She couldn't source the exact high quality goat hair yarn that she has been using for many years at any price anywhere. A few of my friends own one or two. It would take years to reach her level. She finishes them off so beautifully.

I have two Scandinavian looms and thought they might be able to pull off a decent carpet. Noriko and Kamei san found a shop selling camel yarn in Tokyo. This is our first try and I think they turned out quite beautiful. We will set the loom up again for a wider attempt. I'll see if the lighter colored camel hair will dye with madder. I'd like to weave a carpet for my entrance with the dark color and a blood red alternating. With all the construction going on it I'll get around to it a few years down the road. As I figured...once I started there would be no end to house renovations.

The construction going on upstairs is definitely taking it's toll on my blogging. Rooms are starting to form out of the chaos.

Workshop in Europe

2011-01-23T21:09:00.005+09:00

The University of Liechtenstein's Architecture and Economics departments give their undergraduate and graduate students a chance to participate in a week-long course not related to their fields of study once a year. (Liechtenstein is a small Principality sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland. The Prince lives with his family in a castle above the main town.) There were ten other guest workshop leaders. A shoe maker, toy designer, a ceramist , furniture designer, print maker/archiver, and other very talented cool designers from other European countries taught. I was short on concept and words and we basically got straight to work indigo dying. The students were all exceptionally creative and it was pure pleasure to see what great ideas they came up with. Scarves, work-belts and book covers were obligatory and then they brought in their old clothes to dye with indigo. It was simply a wonderful time. I want to thank the students and other workshop leaders and the University folks for a very memorable time.

Katagami in St Gallen

2011-01-19T16:41:00.012+09:00

I was in St Gallen, Switzerland last week and visited the textile museum there. St Gallen was a textile production center in Europe and like most other textile producing areas the industry has been 100% gutted because of imports from countries where labor is a fraction of the cost. Out of nostalgia or some sense of historic duty a museum is created. I've visited a few over the years in the Alp countries. Usually somewhat depressing this one wasn't much different. Rooms of heartbreaking beautiful old textiles. Lace and clever printing techniques etc. and then the obligatory area for contemporary works. Seeing the traditional clothing and other textiles of aristocrats and farmers and textiles from other parts of the world. I can't help but feel we dress so poorly in the 21st century. (As I sit typing fully outfitted in mass made 'Made in Laborcheaperia'.)

I had heard that the textile library at the museum had the best collection of Edo period Japanese katazome patterns in the world. For 40 Swiss Francs you can use the library and the librarian is generous and lets you photograph. They had several thousand samples and it was possible to get through about a thousand of them in a few hours. Here are a few that caught our imagination.

You can purchase antique linen at markets in Vienna and in Swiss towns. Barbara and I are thinking about having an exhibition using Japanese indigo stencil techniques on antique Alps linen in some potentially treacherous fashion. It will hard to navigate through the steep mountain ridges of design to avoid falling into the Woodstock or the Kleenex Box-Cover gorges on either side while avoiding the sheer cliffs of humorless-culture-hybrid-textile-art.

Primitive Rope Making

2010-12-18T16:44:00.005+09:00

Someone had cut down a shuro tree and taken it to the local sawmill to have it processed. The shredded type bark looked as if it would make a good lesson in beauty/utility. Sure enough, Ogata san knew how to make a strong rope and immediately set about showing the other students how to. We couldn't find her 'off' switch and she quickly used up everyone else's supply of shred. Her masterpiece is now hung in the kitchen on the art object wall.

Indigo Reduction

2010-12-08T20:37:00.007+09:00

Indigo dying is tricky.
There are some tribes in Africa that seem to be doing it the no-nonsense way. They take the indigo leaves and pound the pigment directly into the cloth with a small club. This is the smart way to avoid the hassle of removing the oxygen from the dying liquid either chemically of through fermenting. If one of the oxygen molecules in the pigment chemical equation is not removed the indigo will not stick to the cloth.

A fermentation type vat gone wrong is the foulest thing that can happen to a natural dyer. Putrid gas. And things can go wrong very quickly. You start with the vat only one tenth full of high pH water from either seeping ash or with slaked lime. Each day you add a bucket or so. When the indigo compost starts to ferment you add a cup of sugar source to just bring the good bacteria over the edge and to bloom. Too early and it burns out without reaching a kind of critical mass and too late it goes bad. (The whole process is kind of sexy come to think of it.) One time I was stupid enough to add a cup of sugar dissolved in tap water that contained chlorine. I should only use water from the stream next to the house.
In an hour the sharp healthy ammonia smell turned to putrid rotten swamp gunk. It could be salvaged with a chemical reduction agent. The color was fine but the smell was foul.

The recent stink was simply caused by a build up of slaked lime and hydro-sulphate reduction agent building up at the bottom of the vat. The hot summer weather starting it stinking and the smell in whatever form it took just couldn't be eliminated.

Like Velma said, the smell in the dyed clothing can be gotten rid of in one hot water wash.

The indigo bubbles on the surface of the indigo tell you the condition of the vat. If they are purple and oily looking there is enough actual pigment in the water. If they are clear and light blue and slightly frothy you need to add pigment. If the liquid just under the surface is not yellow green that is telling you that there is too much oxygen in the vat and needs to be removed.

If you get to know the sound of a stick hitting the inside wall of the vat you can quickly judge the pH level. A low 'thung' means a low pH. A higher 'ting' means the pH is about 12 where it should be. It takes a few years to get really good at reading the signs in the bubbles and the smell. It starts to get like palm reading when you notice lines and milkiness etc and other finer nuances and their meanings as you understand the vat over years.

Indigo dyed good are often attributed with keeping insects and snakes away, stopping athletes foot, and generally being good for you. I wonder.... I've gotten bitten many times while working at the dye vat and a somewhat doubt the poisonous mamushi around my place could care less what I am wearing. If I really annoyed them I'm sure they woud bite no matter what.

I do think that the bacteria on newly dyed indigo clothes from a pure natural fermentation vat might be healthy but I doubt the indigo pigment has any health benifits.

The color itself is another story. As a natural dye it is gentle to look at and vibrates at a pure frequency. This is good for anyone. Pure and simple.

Stinking Indigo Vat at my Door

2010-11-25T10:57:00.013+09:00

It was time to get rid of the old liquid and clean up the ceramic vat and the blue stained walls around it. For the past three years indigo pigment and slaked lime and hydro sulphate were added as necessary week after week. These eventually build up at the bottom of the vat. Eventually it starts to reek something fierce. It dyes as usual but the fun is gone with your gag reflex on hair-trigger mode.

But the strong ammonia smell of a fermentation indigo vat just smells like tough love perfection. However, it is impossible and impractical to keep a fermentation vat going throughout the year. Too much constant maintenance, way too expensive, and the vat is mostly used by students and friends and they tend to dump in anything for the thrill of watching it turn blue.. You have to be very gentle dying with a fermentation vat and it is impossible to keep an eye on who is dying what. A good friend once dyed a heavy duty hammock he picked up in Thailand in the best fermanatation indigo. Must have been a good $200 indigo dye job on a $5 hammock.

Now I make a fementation vat once a year using my own home grown indigo if there is some very good stuff needing a dye job.

The buildup sludge of exhausted pigment, slaked lime and hydro sulphate at the bottom of the vat. I dyed a full day to use up as much pigment as possible. I threw in some old sheets to absorb as much hydro sulphate as possible and neutralize the pH. These I dried in the sun and then put them out in regular burnable garbage. Then I siphoned off the dye liquid. How to get rid of this muck at the bottom is the problem. I dribbled in water for one night and let it go down the outside drain that goes into a river nearby. It would be like dumping in a bucket of bleach if I did it directly so I prolonged the process. It didn't really work and the muck was still in the bucket in the morning. I spread it out to dry and them I'll put it out in the burnable garbage. The exhausted hydro sulphate being the bad guy here.

A fermentation vat is easier on my conscience to throw away. The shock is the high alkaline and that can be soved with the dribble technique.

This little creek crab seemed to like the blue water. It was horrifying and I got him out of there and washed up and placed upstream in a flash.

Add enough slaked lime to get a pH reading of 12. Do this before you add indigo pigment so that the pH test paper doesn't dye blue. The orange paper is a more specific pH test paper used for a more accurate reading. German made electric pH readers are not so expensive and very easy to use for people not used to keeping an indigo vat.

Next add the indigo pigment itself. I use Konya brand I purchase from Seiwa. It is expensive but very very high quality.

A fresh indigo vat ready to use on a misty autumn afternoon.

Damselfly Stencil

2010-11-24T21:30:00.004+09:00

"I want to cut a stencil to make something that is unexpected."
Eri was having a moment of creative fatigue. The straight-faced disgust of ersatz Japanese stencil life. Cherry blossoms and rabbits in the autumn grass stuff. Walking away would have prolonged her misery. On the kitchen table was an entomological book on insects filled with gruesome line illustrations of larvae and pupae and up close hair on the abdomens of water skeeters kind of thing. What about insects? Gross.
She picked it up and within minutes was at work cutting out this damselfly stencil. A little like botanical art.
It worked out and yesterday it was used for the first time. Without wetting the cloth properly it floated on the surface of the indigo giving it a screwed up dye job that somehow works perfect.

Eri will cut out a few more and it looks like she is shooting for a series of Japanese work aprons.

The Mystery Dog

2010-11-13T19:11:00.008+09:00

15 junior high school students dropped by the house to learn about silk and thread making on Tuesday. Walking down to the village entrance to meet them, it was a delight to see Snoopy walking up with them as a good guide would. With a tail wag and a nod, pointing out the shrine, the pride of the village and other village spots of interest.

Does your class keep a dog and take turns looking after it on weekends?
Eh???
Well, whose dog is it? One of you brought it from home?
No. It just showed up a way back and is following us.
I've never seen it around here before. It has a tag, maybe it's name is written on it.
Snoopy.
Is it a male or a female?
(They shyly check.) Female

When they arrive at the house Snoopy walks in the door and drinks from the bucket of water inside the door. The students gasp. Teacher! Is it OK?
No problem. I just use that bucket to wash my shoes. The water is clean. (It is their first time in a house of a non-Japanese and I suppose they swallowed this shoe wash bucket oddity with out much thought.)
She is jumping up into the chair!! Is it OK?
No problem. I'll call the dog catcher later and they will come and pick her up. (Looks of disbelief and horror.)
Does anyone want her? I can't keep a pet here.
No. My grandma hates dogs. I have a Yorkshire Terrier already.
OK. Off to the pound.
Ehhh!!

The cocoon reeling demonstration goes on and Snoopy is getting sad desperate looks and gentle pets. I get a few puppy dog looks from the kids... Can he be that cruel? Sending a dog off to the pound so casually.
Suddenly one kid spots a photo of Snoopy on the table...Teacher!!!!!!!!!!!!! Snoopy lives here!!!!!!!!!!! Their faces all light up and there is a huge collective sigh of relief. Being a little choked up at Snoopy's faux-death-row-last-minute-reprieve the demonstration took a few second break while Snoopy got smothered in almost visible waves of good will. She soaked it up, her coat seemed shinier and the class continued.

Haven't Woven in Sixty Years...

2010-11-02T22:01:00.004+09:00

Ogata san is 92 years old. She lives nearby and has come regularly to my Tuesday class for years now. She does indigo dying but it is getting colder and I am worried about her outside getting a chill with her hands in the indigo in the winter. She makes lunch for us all from whatever is in her garden. She still tills the ground by shovel herself and grows just about everything. It is not like, 'Granny is still pretty sharp.' No, this Granny is actually sharp. She is my bud and we drive around like old friends flirting with each other. I can't help but make cracks about her age. I was telling her how I will fix up my clay storehouse next to my house. "It is in good condition for 150 years old. Well, actually Ogata san it could be your older sister... " This kind of thing. She was already an adult at the end of WWII. Her grandparents lived in Edo period . They wore kimono and lived in a culture we can't really imagine. Now here she is coming to my place and studying traditional Japanese textiles from a Canadian. Nuts.

Something sad about it actually. I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it is the depressing reality of my role in Empire.

We all love her. I've had this monstrous Finnish loom that I have no real idea how to use taking up half a room for several years. Today it started to function again. Ogata san wove kimono for many years when she was young for herself and her family. She hasn't woven in sixty years and a few of us were almost teary watching her give it another shot all these years later. I set it for a tweed and she quickly took it on a joyride and showed us what it could do. She later confessed that she actually couldn't remember the pedal sequence.

Hole in Blog / Hole in House

2010-10-31T21:41:00.007+09:00

It was a slow build up and then the snowball effect. This old farmhouse is just too big to start renovating. Endless. The house was more of a huge barn than a house and the holes in the walls where the clay walls had fallen out and bird's nests in the rafters and un-entered-for-years-rooms are somehow charming. At first there was an ambitious plan of making six massive cabinets that would at least get a fraction of the boxes and stuff off the floor. They filled up as they were completed and it didn't really seem to be making a dent in the volume of silk farming equipment weaving looms and cocoon reelers and a collection of old wood waiting to be made into something, a far out of control collection of everything. Space is a luxury in Japan and it quickly fills up as free storage for friends!

There are massive smoke stained rafters and beams and pillars. The third floor will have to wait but the second floor has been ripped out and is now being put back together. One convenient aspect to old Japanese farmhouses is that when you rip out the floor and replace it you also are ripping out the ceiling below. So here are a few snaps of what is going on. Thanks to my students for putting up with the hammering and sawing as you go about your work below. The space on the second floor will be a weaving workshop with room for more looms.

Luckily there is a small cedar mill a few kilometers away that reminds me of the cedar mill in Canada that kept me going for nine years. The house is getting an upgraded and remodeled gentrified look. All the poetry is being wiped out with every rotten piece of flooring replaced and each hole patched. Mentioning this to the Buddhist Priest/carpenter who is helping , he flatly replied that it was "Bad unhygienic poetry and it would be far better off with cleanliness." But maybe the dirt should have been scrubbed away, the holes in the wall left as they were and then a foot of sawdust thrown on the floor and trampled down and the weaving class expanded onto that instead of the theme restaurant direction these renovations are headed into. On the other hand, 'The smell of decay can be covered with the sound of construction.'

Faux Smoked Salmon Skin/ Obi progress

2010-09-29T14:21:00.015+09:00

Takeshima wove some paper thread weft on a linen warp. It was her first time to weave anything.The paper thread came from some odds and ends picked up on Yahoo auction. Once woven she cut out a Buddhist cloud pattern (her first stencil) and we made the rice and bran paste and then dyed it with indigo. Then we took off the paste, shifted the pattern slightly and re-pasted it. I dipped it in the persimmon tannin every morning for three weeks and it came out looking like smoked salmon skin. She is a very imaginative bag maker and we are all looking forward to see the salmon bag. Her first weaving and first stencil dye project in one.

Kamei san has been working on her obi step by step by step using shibori and katazome techniques together. Again it was pasted once and dyed with indigo six times. The paste removed and the obi dried and ironed. Next a second pasting of the same stencil slightly shifted and dyed twice to get a light blue shadow. The obi will be folded in half and the back pattern is shibori. Next step will be to dye the shibori half with an orange dye, perhaps madder with gardenia pods. The blue will be greenish.

The back side of the obi stitched and ready to dye.

Pasted for the second time with the stencil slightlyshifted. Use fine cedar sawdust on the still sticky rice paste to make it slightly stronger. We looked at several samples of Japanese karakusa (arabesque) and combined several ideas and from that she cut out this particular stencil.

Looking refined and timeless with a few more steps left!

Persimmons and Stencil Dying

2010-09-27T20:58:00.008+09:00

Persimmon tannin is used to make the traditional Japanese katagami stencil paper and I use persimmon tannin later in the process to dye with.

Certain varieties of unripe persimmons are used for their high tannin content to make a traditional water repellent in Japan and Korea. (Perhaps, also in other areas in the world I am not aware of.) You run across articles on persimmon tannin processing in magazines and musty old journals on Japanese crafts. Inevitably the used-for-a-single-week-a-year-hand-cranked-fruit/persimmon squasher is pictured in the corner of a smelly barn along with rustic bamboo baskets overflowing with green persimmons . A farmer and his wife with cool dental work and tenugui wrapped on their heads standing in front of wood casks of fermenting liquid proudly but shyly. The process is described but the real secrets of the trade, like how long the fruit is allowed to ferment and how the bad bacteria is killed and how it is filtered etc. are always left conspicuously out. I've never been able to make the high-quality stuff but make an unrefined (some say better, but I don't agree) instant version.

Our local band of monkeys climb up and steal the fruit this time of year and it is easy to collect the fallen squashies and grate them with a stainless cheese grater. Then squeeze out the pulp and use the juice to dye thread and cloth. It takes several weeks for the earth tones to come out.

The persimmon tannin liquid that is more stable than my home made version. There has been a boom in kakishibi use the past few years and the price has dramatically come down. The slightly more expensive type from Seiwa in Takodanobaba is very good. They came out with a much less smelly version a few years ago. Why they still sell the rancid 'Eau de Poo' variety at the same price it is difficult understand. It used to be like buying a bottle of distilled diarrhea. Honestly.

Every house in the Japanese countryside has at least a few persimmon trees. At least one would be a sweet variety where the fruit can be eaten once it turns red in October. The others will be a very astringent variety that will be peeled and strung up from the outside rafters in the sun to make a sweet dried fruit. The leaves in early spring are used to wrap sushi in and contain some natural preservative that lightly flavors the fish. The trees themselves are a gorgeous part of the autumn scenery with the red fruit hanging form branches the farmers/monkeys couldn't reach. A few hang in there into winter for birds to savor.

The house with a few hanging/drying persimmons.

Persimmon dye needs ultra-violet rays to change into the golden brown color. You dilute the liquid one third to one fifth depending on whether you are dying thread or depending on the coarseness of the cloth and it's eventual function. Wet the cloth directly in the diluted solution and then place it directly on the ground or I sometimes put it on my metal kitchen roof. Snoopy loves to walk on it as it dries so precious stuff gets the roof treatment where Snoopy can't access it. You want as much heat and direct sun as possible. The tannin absorbs the suns rays and turns a crispy golden brown. One piece usually goes through this process at least 15 times. Thread of course is hung up.

It is impossible to get an even dye on thread. Just the areas the sun hits in the first few hours will turn dark.

I look forward to the dying season all winter and can squeeze in perhaps five weeks from mid-May until the monsoon starts and I start again in August when it lifts. The days are getting shorter now and there are only a few weeks left to dye at most. Last week that the color changes slower than it has been. The shadows are longer and it's sad not to be up at the crack of dawn with the daily routine of wetting the cloth and thread and arranging it in the sun to soak up the heat.

This same persimmon tannin has been used for hundreds of years to make a layered paper called, Katagami used for cutting stencils. Thin washi (Japanese hand made paper)is covered with the tannin and several layers are added. (I have seen it made with newspaper and tannin as well.) It comes in several thicknesses. It is tough and when wet resembles leather to some degree. It can be punch cut or cutter knife cut. Some stencils require a fine silk mesh to be lacquered in place to enforce the stencil before it can be used. It has a distinct wood creosote smell. (Creosote is what they used to dunk railway ties in to preserve them. When making charcoal the sugar and liquid content of the wood goes out the chimney. The liquid can be dripped/distilled out of the flue easily.)

I am currently cutting out this stencil of lotus and leaves. I will use the stencil to make a kimono which has no shoulder seams. The pattern must face both up and down and look natural. Hmmm. The design on the edges must line up to make a repeating pattern. It is too Japanese folk-crafty for my liking but already I've invested a dozen evening beer and as many hours so I'll finish it up. I'll carve three stencils in total to resist in several startges. The flowers white. The pond dark and the leaves light blue. Still a lot of work ahead of me here before the pasting and dying even start. You can see the special hand made knife I use to cut the stencil out with.

There are a few large pots of lotus outside the front door and they are used as a motifs occasionally. They bloom only a few hours and then fade quickly. They are heavily laden with Buddhist meaning. Out of the mud comes purity... life is transient...kind of thing. Buddha usually sits on some kind of lotus platform and lotus are often swirling around somewhere in his halo or on his garments.

Here is a stencil I carved many years ago of willow branches behind a blind. It has been used so many times it has fallen to pieces. It is still possible still squeeze out a few more works once in a while. The stencil may be in shreds but it seems happy to be made use out of. Like dropping by for coffee with an old friend who isn't quite all there but seems to enjoy the company and reminiscing about younger days.

This wallet was made from some linen patterned from the falling apart stencil. Indigo and persimmon tannin dyes.

Making Tools

2010-09-24T10:22:00.004+09:00

I encourage all my students to weave on simple back strap looms for some time before investing in a larger expensive loom. First, so that they really know if they like weaving or it is just a romantic passing phase. Secondly, I think the experience with a more primitive loom gives them more insight into weaving and the aesthetics I particularly want to pass on to them. Some make their own reeds from bamboo grown locally. (see old post, TUESDAY, 30 MARCH, 2010) Here Minako has just finished her back cushion for her simple backstrap loom. She wove the rag weave herself using vegetable dyed silk scraps from old kimono lining and dyed the indigo inner cushion. The smoked bamboo support comes from the bamboo rafters of a thatch roofed farmhouse that was sadly taken down in a near by village last year. These simple parts of her weaving tools will last a lifetime. Like drinking from a favorite cup over many years it is comforting to use familiar and comforting tools to weave.

Natural Dyes

2010-09-24T09:58:00.003+09:00

Here is a good example of how a single dye bath can produce dye two different shades. The pigment was from onion skins. Approximately four times the weight of the dry silk to be dyed. The skins were brought to a boil and the first liquid was taken, carefully filtering any jellyish gunk from the boiled bath. The skins were brought to a boil again and the second dye bath taken. They were combined. The lighter skein was dyed for five minutes and then iron mordanted in a light solution for a few minutes. The lighter skein was also dyed in skein form and not opened so that the thread intentionally dyes unevenly. The second skein was left in the dye bath for 30 minutes and 10 minutes in a slightly stronger iron mordant solution. The color depth and difference coming from the amount of pigment absorbed, the amount of mordant used and the amount of time the thread was mordanted and left in the dye bath. Both colors are beautiful. I prefer to dye many different colors, build up a stock and then combine them later. On occasion I will aim for a specific color if the dyestuff is not available throughout the year and I want to weave a bigger item like a kimono.

I spun the darker silk roughly on a foot peddled spinning wheel. The camel colored thread was spun by Minako san on a motor driven silk spinner.

Katazome

2010-09-15T16:45:00.008+09:00

In a few posts over the next month I will try to give some insights into Japanese Katazome from my experiences. No Specific order...

Katazome is the word used for a paste resist type of dying in Japan. The subject quickly gets broad and deep at the same time. I'll keep it somewhat simple and focused to indigo dyed material here.

It was a skill I picked up unintentionally over several years. I often visited a katazome/indigo craftsman in a nearby town to dye with his indigo in the winter months when I didn't have a vat going at my house myself. I was first introduced to Noguchi san 17 years ago when I took my elderly friend there so she could dye some silk thread blue for a kimono she wanted to weave for her husband. I had been to several natural fermentation indigo studios before (and studied) but this was the first one that seemed 'pure' in the sense that it was a 7th generation craftsman making a single product, a double-sided paste resist summer cotton kimono.

The place was/is ramshackle and even had a wooden bathtub heated by a fire. Unfortunately it was replaced by a plastic model a few years back. (Let me digress...an aged wooden cedar bathtub feels like heaven on yer bare bottom after a hard day at the indigo vat.) In other words, the place was real. No pretensions, no gift shop selling indigo dyed tissue box covers and dorky hiking hats with a tag explaining that indigo has been 'used since ancient times to ward off mosquitoes'. Here was just a straightforward craftsman and his wife and family struggling to make ends meet.

At that time I was dying thread and shape resist material and not interested in Katazome.

I was doing my best to get a handle on those skills and was cognitively dissonant to the process going on next to me that Noguchi san had been going through since he was a child helping his father and grandfather. I watched him from a distance in his studio and asked polite questions about the seemingly impossible to understand process. There were ancient hand crank machines and brick ovens, wooden tubs of ash and powders and soot and soybeans and an array of blue stained hooked and pointed tools. I felt I had seen these things in some torture dungeon in a castle/museum somewhere in Europe. I knew these tools were all in-use to make a simple innocent looking roll of flower printed indigo cloth. The whole place is still somewhat spooky and time slipped like a surreal indigo blue splashed slaughterhouse. A casual glance around the place with the almost overwhelming smell of ammonia from the fermenting indigo vats might make you into some kind of denim phobic version of a vegetarian.

I honestly thought it would take a life time of someone far more skilled than myself to penetrate into. So I didn't even try at first.

Taking in his complex work was like learning a language. Watching the big one's mouths move and unconsciously forming the sounds with your own mouth. I must have looked pretty fetal speaking broken Japanese and gawking all around me at the incomprehensible chaotic studio.

I helped him prepare a 6 meter board with heavy rice paste one day. I couldn't fathom why. I watched him make the paste from some really foul-looking goops in ceramic containers pulled out of a burrow in the ground. I couldn't fathom all the fuss and effort until years later when I started to make my own paste that always seemed to be lacking something. Body or elasticity or some other quality that made it impossible to get a clear line when dying.

He would grind some red powder from taken from an amber apothocaric type chipped glass cylinder kept on a rafter beam, with a mortar and pestle. Later I figured out some of the chaos in the system and that there was a system in the chaos. The goop was kept under the ground to keep it cool and not quite fermenting, the pigment was kept on a rafter to keep it dry and was used to make the paste visible on a neutral background fabric. The heavier paste was to hold the linen in perfect place so the pattern could be seamlessly stenciled in place. The hundreds of steps are not carried out in an order that makes sense to the casual observer. Dropping in once a month for a few hours was like randomly reading pages in a Dostoevsky novel. It couldn't possibly make sense until read from the start to the finish.

After several years of visiting Noguchi san I realized I had almost unintentionally figured out what he was doing. When I started the questions in earnest I ran into the famous Japanese proverb and it painfully stubbed my too big Caucasian nose. 'A master doesn't teach you must steal his technique.'

Stealing technique. Young me and ageless Noguchi san.

Technique stolen and starting on my own.

He was suddenly very mute and I even got an single arched eyebrow and grumpf when I queried a bit to obviously into his secret recipe for keeping his indigo healthy in the winter. I've caught my own eyebrow arch and a snark in my own voice when I am asked these same questions now. Not that I am being cheap with the tricks of the trade. No... it's that the tricks have taken years and years to pick up and it is like asking a fisherman about the cloud formations and the chance of rain. These things are not put into words and to try invites an instant migraine.

Noguchi san.

Cherry Tree Bark Dye

2010-09-14T22:32:00.010+09:00

We climbed up the mountain behind the house and cut a few branches of wild mountain yamazakura. We thinly sliced off the bark off the heavier branches and finely chopped up the smaller twigs. The leaves are sweet so at this time of year insects have munched most of them off. What was leftover went into the dye pot as well. Boiled for an hour the dye liquid was a loquat colored pink. We dyed hand spun silk a creamy yellow without the slightest hint of the pink we were hoping for. (And I had promised...) Maybe the specific tree, maybe the time of year but no pinkish hue.
With a light iron mordant we got a delicate green grey which we found to be called, torinokoiro 'bird egg/baby color' in Japanese.

Besides the general practical information about mordant salts and which plant gives which color I had to start to explain the limitations of trying to get the same color twice. You can never make the exact silk thread twice. The amount of gum removed from the silk will be different. The amount of twist will be different and the plants pigment content are always changing with the season and the weather.

They are both learning to spin silk floss right now. I'll try to show them the colors we can get form the vines, branches, roots and leaves in the close vicinity of my house each week. I tell the students the best way to learn about natural dying is to just keep dying and dying for months. The amount of thread builds up and then the fun part of combining colors starts.

It was Minako and Takeshima's first go at natural dyes. Looks like they are hooked after their first try.

Arrow Kasuri... weaving up well

2010-09-13T20:38:00.009+09:00

This is some thing I am working on. I tied and resisted some of the warp threads first. Then indigo dyed them.

Threading the reed and warping was trouble free but quite slow.

The arrow kasuri was a common pattern in the Edo period. Lining them up harmoniously is the tricky part. The thread is linen. It will be folded in half and become a men's obi. Yuko and I will l weave 4 meters each. She is so skilled. Just started weaving and already she is keeping up with me on such a difficult project.

Kamei san's Nagoya Obi

2010-09-13T20:27:00.002+09:00

Kamei san cut her own stencil on persimmon tannin paper and applied a silk net to keep the stencil strong. She is applying the rice and bran paste with some red pigment to the cloth. The red pigment in the paste is eventually washed away. It functions so that the paste is visible against the cloth color to ensure the paste is spread evenly. The next step will be to dye it indigo tomorrow, reapply paste on both sides and then if weather permits start persimmon tannin dying over the next few weeks while the ultra-violet rays are still strong enough.

The powder is from red cedar and helps the paste last a few more dips in the indigo.

She is adding the resist paste by hand/finger to the bars that support her stencil pattern.

Yokoyama san's Linen Obi Finished.

2010-09-13T20:17:00.004+09:00

The obi was so beautiful Snoopy insisted on getting in the picture.

While the rest of us are often in the kitchen or outside at the indigo vat Yokoyama san has been weaving on like a marine on the back strap loom for what seems like an eternity. Her dedication paid off today as she finished up a men's obi. I found the thread on the Internet. Some very old stock and it was a definite...'they don't make it like this anymore' moment when I got my hands and eyes on it when it arrived. She dyed the thread with indigo.

Summer Cotton/Linen Kimono

2010-09-02T22:58:00.008+09:00

It is a bit of a challenge to make sure each of the students makes a yukata different from the other students. I wanted Kamei san to make something feminine and elegant. It took her a tremendous amount of effort to tie this 13 meters of linen. The dying would usually take a full day to dip and then oxidize the entire roll over ten times. This time we simply poured the indigo onto the material, let it oxidize and repeated this several times to get an icy and cloudy effect. It looks very Kyoto I felt. The dying only took half an hour. It must of felt slightly anti-climatic for her after all that work stitching and binding. Shibori aficionados will love the effort gone into this subtle work.

This is a sample of what her yukata would have looked like had she dipped it ten times. Traditional pattern. Very bold.

Great Summer for Indigo

2010-08-30T21:20:00.005+09:00

I had a late start this year with indigo as it snowed on April 24th wiping out all my seedlings. We have had a scorching blue August and in 17 years of growing indigo I've never had such healthy thick leaves and such high pigment content. (The ton of cow manure I plowed into the soil this spring might have helped.) My first harvest was a few weeks late but a bumper still the same. I should get a second harvest in three weeks. I cut the indigo back and left 15 centimeters. A week of scorching blue skies before the harvest and an early morning cut and two scorching days with a slight breeze to dry the leaves as quickly as possible is the key to a high pigment yield. I couldn't have asked for more this year. This Japanese indigo has a low pigment percentage to start with. Perhaps only 5 to 7 percent. Cloudy weather and weak sun on harvest days ceratainly doesn't help. The depth of the blue in the dried leaves indicates the amount of pigment.

I'll keep the crispy dry leaves in a dry place and in the depth of winter I'll wet them and wrap them in a straw mat and ferment them for three months to make the indigo balls. It is possible to start the composting/ fermentation right away but the line is close between rotting and fermenting. Little risk of the former in the winter months.

Katazome Technique

2010-08-26T21:36:00.004+09:00

When teaching students about katazome they often freak out because they "can't draw". I found an easy way around this and it eliminates the hours of them torturing themselves over what pattern to cut in the stencil. I simply cut some flower or branch from the garden and have them trace the shadow on the persimmon paper. Then using a clever technique of a Japanese blind as a way to keep the stencil strong I have them cut out the pattern. You get a flower behind the screen look. It always works.

I held a blooming yellow iris last spring well Eri drew the outline on the paper. The stencil turned out wonderful. Here, I had her dye it with indigo. We re-pasted/resisted the material and then dyed it over ten consecutive days with persimmon tannin to get the deep browns. (Persimmon tannin needs a heavy dose of ultra-violet rays to change color.) The interference pattern where the stencil was slightly ( intentionally ) offset gives the work a retro-Asian shabby-chic look.

Eri was clever and used the technique to carve a stencil of grass and insects. We paste resited the edge of a soft cotton Japanese towel/scarf tenugui . It came out so cool and elegant that other students have asked to use her stencil to make their own. It has been a scorching hot sweltering summer. A light delicate tenugui not only makes you feel cooler just looking at it but functions well as an elegant sweat wipe.

2010-08-26T21:17:00.005+09:00

Takeshima san made this great bag from the burlap type yarn she had used to bind and resist her yukata with when she dyed it in the indigo. There is often this kind of by-product when using indigo. The indigo is precious and the by-products often make you think how to use them to their best advantage. Here we have a good example of the freshness from frugality you can often see in old traditional Japanese textiles. The yarn had dyed a very cool rough blue with the yarn itself resisted in places. I love the resourcefulness. The yarn I believe, was a roll that I had bought at the local gardening center to use to tie up my jungle of tomato vines.

The thread after unwinding the shibori:

Another Summer Yukata

2010-08-10T22:16:00.004+09:00

Kawamoto san and I worked together to determine the pattern on her yukata project at the Tuesday class at my house. The result came out of the indigo vat this afternoon. Different stitching tensions helped add a nuanced finish to this masterpiece. This is also one of her very first pieces of Shibori. Almost unbelievable.

Un-oxidized indigo fresh from the bath:

The other students helped her undo the binding in time for a quick look as the sun went down:

Hinode Shibori/ Sunrise Shibori

2010-08-10T21:54:00.005+09:00

Stitched, tied and wrapped and ready to dye:

Dyed ten tines and ready to unwrap:

The finished Yukata:

Takeshima san went to to great lengths to finish this charming tie-dye summer linen/cotton yukata. It must have taken her a few hundred hours to stitch then tie and wrap and then untie and unwrap this whimsical yet precise masterpiece. I forgot to mention the full sweltering day slaving over and in the indigo vat dipping and squeezing it over ten times to get the dark blues. She sewed it up herself and will now move on to the next project, a persimmon dyed obi/belt to go with it.

Vegetable Dying on Old Kimono Lining

2010-08-09T22:52:00.004+09:00

This is a group of tea ceremony teachers and students. They also formed a group that makes the small silk bags that hold the ceramic tea caddies used in the tea ceremony. It was their first visit to my house. They brought old linings from kimono to dye to use as linings for the shifuku bags. I madly boiled up kihada for the yellow. Gobaishi for the steel grey. Akane/madder for the pink/oranges. Lac for the rose red. Yashabushi for the mustards and some good old onion skins for the deep olives and umbers. Of course there was the indigo vat to over-dye anything and everything. We spent the day in a flood of natural dying. The results were great.

Backstrap Looms

2010-08-05T18:57:00.005+09:00

An Izaribata or Jibata is a traditional type of Japanese loom that is used specifically for tight weaves of natural fibers such as hemp and nettle. It is also used for weaving ragweave as it can be beaten to a tight windbreak-proof weave. They are also used to weave Yuki Tsumugi the un-spun silk in the Yuki area. The weave is tight. Ones body actually becomes part of the loom controlling the tautness of the warp. The warp is beaten with both the reed as well as the baton-like shuttle with the tightness partially controlled with the weaver's back tension resulting in the tightest weave possible.
Here Yokoyama san is trying out a back strap loom.

There are pro's and cons to this kind of loom. You can't weave fast. You are almost stuck with plain weave. But you can weave tight and you are forced to think of what the essence of beautiful piece of cloth is because you are working with such a primitive and sensitive type of loom.

Kasuri Perfectionism

2010-08-05T18:40:00.007+09:00

Ikat and Kasuri are the words commonly used to describe the process of dying a design into the threads before they are woven on either/both the warp and weft. Here are just a few images to see how fine and elegant the Japanese masters have taken this art. The warp and weft are finely resisted with cotton thread and then dyed. Several colors can be dyed onto a single thread. The non repeating patterns of the weft are painstakingly copied from a pattern and marked with a sumi dipped piece of bamboo.

1500 Years of Silk Weaving in Yuki Villages

2010-08-05T18:18:00.006+09:00

Eleven students and I paid a visit to the Yuki area north of Tokyo in Ibaragi and Tochigi prefectures on Tuesday. The area is famous for producing the world's only unspun/thrown type of silk weave in the world. The ikat/kasuri rolls of silk for one kimono go for about $20 000 - $60 000 US dollars.

What a brilliant day. We visited four different organizations. Each extremely informative and friendly. We were all taken aback and impressed beyond words.

The fabrics were heavenly. The craftspeople talented and patient beyond words.

1500 years of painstakingly making silk floss and pulling it into fine threads..not spinning or reeling it. There are 40 different steps between the silk cocoon and the finished roll of silk. Each step requiring extraordinarily care and well...1500 years of perfectionism.

I could fill a moths blog on just that one day excursion. I wanted to see some specific parts of the entire process to fill in some technical holes in my own work.

I wanted to look carefully at the Japanese technique of making a thread heddle set. We watched a master at work for an hour and I learned volumes from her resourceful and graceful hands.

Lotus

2010-07-28T22:53:00.004+09:00

I hauled this inside this morning to keep it out of the sun and so that the students could enjoy the blooms. I also put my back out doing it. It was a slow class.

Yukata Designs

2010-07-12T22:20:00.005+09:00

Seven students have decided to make linen/cotton shibori summer kimono and are making small small samples of shibori techniques to decide what pattern they like the best. Ogata san went all out and tried shirokage shibori. The square checked one. It was too much work so she decided that she won't attempt a 12 meter version. It would take several hundred hours to complete. I'm looking forward to seeing the complete yukatas before the heat of summer sets in.

University Students

2010-06-28T21:08:00.002+09:00

We had a lucky break in the rainy season for a group of university students who came over and dyed some tenugui. It always amazes me that even with the exact same technique each persons tenugi comes out different.

A new backstrap loom class for beginners.

2010-06-18T22:23:00.006+09:00

Three very enthusiastic students have made up a Friday class. To keep it interesting I have all three of them weaving something slightly different. Koike san is weaving saki ori for the first time. (Actually it was the first time she wove anything today.) I had some old silk kimono lining that I dyed with madder and Lac. Perfect to rip into fine strips and weave.

Takeshima san is weaving some fine white paper thread she will later surface design with indigo and persimmon tannin.

Kameii san is weaving a gorgeous random indigo hemp stripe. Picture to come.

My Karma is going to pay for this..

2010-06-18T00:56:00.009+09:00

I 'll probably be born as a silkworm in my next million lives ( A rough estimate of the number of silkworms I will have raised and then killed in this life.) and for eternity face one of the several choice fates the silkworms have faced because of me.

Left alone the silk moth will melt a hole in the cocoon ten days after the silkworm had spun it in order to escape and mate. The cocoon would then be useless for reeling with breaks in the continuous fiber. So I have to kill the chrysalis. There are a few techniques. Slightly salting the cocoons to dry them. Boiling and then reeling before the moth is formed. Keeping them in the fridge for a long cold slow death or placing them on the scorching hot tin metal roof on my kitchen to dry out in the sun.

Today I used the hell-hot-roasting-roof to do the trick.

Just to put some faces to the last silk farmers in my area.

2010-06-18T00:45:00.005+09:00

Jimbo sans are over 80. This will be their last year raising silkworms. Both of them have raised silkworms their entire lives.
They are self-sufficient rice farmers as well as making their own miso and tofu from their own soybeans. Wow.

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