Leafy Video

Thank you Mark.


Short video of what was going on this spring....

Happi Hantens: Hand Sewn, Indigo dyed, Original Hand Cut Stencils.

Our Hanten jackets are finished.  Yazaki san came to the house and taught us to sew them by hand.

How many hundreds of subtle steps were there before we put them on? Making the paste from boiling rice four and mixing with bran.  Crushing soy beans to make a liquid to bind the pigments to the cloth.

How could our seven sets of eyes and cameras document so much?

We were all in awe. I don't know where to start writing about it. I will put together a few workshops in the future. How to cut the stencils, use the different pigments with the indigo and how to hand sew these hanten jackets. I am looking forward to mastering sewing them myself.

It was an unforgettable few weeks. Thank you. 

I am leaving for Europe in a few hours for an exhibition and some fresh alpine air.  The exhibition will be at the Gasometer in Triesen in Liechtenstein. I'll be visiting friends in Switzerland and Austria as well.  Exhibition and Workshop in Liechtenstein

Making Katazome Rice Paste/ Harvesting Indigo.

It was sweltering at the stencil studio yesterday. Dripping sweat didn't dampen our enthusiasm much. Only a few scorching minutes that seemed to drag on for eternity. It was worth it.

The stencils are resisted with a rice paste. Each master seems to have their own recipe. The basic ingredients are glutinous rice flour, fine rice bran and slaked lime. According to the material being stencilled and the complexity and fineness of the stencil itself the elasticity and thickness of the paste is adjusted. The paste is also used to size the 6 meter long boards to attach the cloth to. The material must be stuck on firmly but leave no paste residue on the back when peeled off. Each sizing of the board lasts approximately five uses.

We boiled the balls of mochi rice paste on an old wood fire stove for three hours and then stirred and mixed and added the boiling goop water to get the exact right consistency. It was an overwhelming amount of sensory information. Our eyes met in disbelief at the process and rolled upwards in solidarity worship of these master craftsmen.

Next the rice bran was prepared with lime and water to perfect the elasticity of the paste.

The paste used to size the boards has no bran. The motions took us a while to understand and will take hours of practice to really get.

I soaked soybeans overnight in water and then smushed them in this mortar. The juice was strained out and then mixed with a red pigment and some pine soot.

We will make hanten festival jackets but first needed to practice on cheap cotton to get the technique for painting on the pigments and then resisting the colours and dipping to get an indigo background. 

We are up late tonight designing and cutting stencils for use tomorrow. It has been a long day. We were up early harvesting indigo this morning. Looks like an exceptionally good crop this year. Thanks to all the sunshine and manure. The sun and a slight breeze helped dry out the leaves to a dark blue in a few hours. The smell of drying indigo is sublime.

Japanese Stencil Master In-House Study

Noguchi san is a 6th generation katazome master. His son Kazu is the 7th. I have known them for 17 years now. I could write volumes on my experiences at their studio. I bring my out-of-towners there and watch them levitate in cultural and textile heaven.

Although I have spent countless days over the years at Noguchi sans studio there are things I still haven't picked up. I decided to go formally study with them for a few weeks this August.  I am bringing along some friends so we can all pick up the minute details. Seven pairs of eyes are more effective than one.

Kim, Mini, Serge, Dillon, Harada kun, Aliki and myself.

There are recipes for making the rice resist paste in books and on the Internet. I've tried a few and they work. I've asked Noguchi san how he does it but was never quite sure of the minute details. He is teaching us how to do it. Not on the small scale I usually manage in my kitchen though. He measures out the sifted mochi rice powder and slaked lime and adds boiling water.

The quality and strength of the slaked lime changes over time. He was particularly concerned with this point. He has been making it for 65 years. It is hard for him to tell us all the nuances of the lime never mind the other thousand details he manages in the entire process.

He works with his wife in a well choreographed kneading ritual. Cutting the dough-like rice past in sections and exchanging them in effortless tosses to each other. 

The paste patties are now ready for the next step we will do today.

One of our projects will be to make a festival jacket. The scope of Japanese standardization left us all speechless at the end of a long day. Three ancient nails on the wall is all that is needed to measure out the material into lengths for sleeves and the body and to know where the stencils will be placed to line up on the back of the jacket. 

The fermentation indigo was in perfect condition in the sweltering summer heat.

Our resident hunky Dillon models the shirushibanten we will all make.

Aliki and Dillon align their stencils so the pattern matches seamlessly. 

There was enough information to write a book just on first day visit. It is hard to edit my excitement to write even a simple blog post. I will keep you posted over the next few weeks.