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

Living in a small mountain village just outside of Tokyo, I grow a crop of indigo every year and process the leaves into dye using traditional methods. I also breed silk moths, raise the silkworms and then reel/spin the silk from the cocoons. The silk is then dyed with natural dyes and finally woven on traditional Japanese looms. I run several ten-day live-in workshops a year at the old farmhouse here in Japan focusing on the Japanese use of indigo. Contact me for information.

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Indigo. Still green, fresh from the vat.

Noriko came back to classes after a five month visit to her hometown in north Japan. She headed straight to the indigo and started to dye the homework that had piled up over her absence.

Cloth comes out green when dipped in indigo. It turns blue in less than a minute as the broken indigo pigment sugar picks up an additional oxygen molecule in the air outside the vat.

1 comment:

Alfred27 March 2010 at 10:09
I love those fugitive, ephemeral greens that appear upon removing the item from the vat, and watching it turn gradually blue.
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