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.
Thursday 5 August 2010
Kasuri Perfectionism
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.
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