Warping Silk Preparation the Japanese Way

I learned to warp a traditional Japanese loom from an elderly woman in my town. I live in a town which had been a silk producing area for hundreds of years. Unfortunately I am the only one left raising silkworms.

My teacher had learned to weave from her mother and grandmother. Every house would have several looms for silk up until 40 years ago here.

I believe this silk thread preparation technique would have come from the late Meiji and Taisho period in this town. Early 1900's to the 1920's. Households would get thread from a distributor and they would weave "Oshima Tsumugi" and sell it to back to the wholesaler. The quantities of the rice and seaweed glue are probably appropriate to that specific thread and dyes. I've played around with the proportions but keep it much the same as how I had learned.

Three ingredients:
Funori. A type of white seaweed that melts in boiling water to a watery rubber cement consistency. When it dries it makes the threads stiff.

Rice. I boil a cup in two liters of water and filter out a milky paste that will bind the single threads together gently.

Walnuts. I crush two walnuts in a piece of heavy cheesecloth and then when I put in water I can get a slippery white milk. This let's the beater slide easily and improves the sheen of the silk.

I submerge the already warped threads in this mixture for less than a minute ands gently wring it out. Using a fan to dry the silk as it is warped onto the larger drum. Quite a process.

New Warp

I have a new student Yuko who is nimble learner. Very good with her hands and quick at calculating warp count. She has a sterling sense of color and ingrained knowledge of Japanese color combinations. It is her first time to weave but the project is quite complex. She is a graphic designer and I bought $1500 worth of Adobe software several years ago and it sat in the boxes unused. So we are exchanging lessons. Weaving for Creative Suite...about as far apart on the analogue and digital spectrum as you could move.

It is early early spring and persisting with my notion of weaving the local landscape we wound these Japanese wooden waku with ten colors that we see outside. The cherry and apricots are out so we have some pink shades. Other than that just some faded greens and fawns. No youthful green yet. The landscape is bleary-eyed and hopeful. Inclement breezed with some rhythmical decay and determined steps towards warmth. We will weave up a project together. 5 cm wide Japanese scent bags. We warped four 'bags' worth and will play with the interference of the wefts on the warps.

Here are the basics colors we started with:



All of the silk comes from silk I've raised and reeled and dyed myself. The dyes all natural. Kudzu vines. Laquot leaves and branches. Plum tree bark. Madder (Akane). Thistle stems. Persimmon tannin. Most of the silk was reeled from ten cocoons and 7 combined with a single Z twist. 250 turns per meter. Only the pink was fully de gummed. The other thread was simply semi-degummed in boiling water so it isn't shiny.

Snoopy played her part as Gaurdianess of the Winding Warp. She never gives up hope that the entire process will eventually end up as some sort of barbeque where she can feast on the leftovers.



And the four sections of the warp to be later cut into strips.

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.

Indigo Season

It is hardly what you might call warm but the indigo vat looks as if it will be as popular as ever this year. Hitomi came over this morning to do some dying with friends. A slight warm breeze and some freshly arrived birds twittering away.

Current Exhibition

I am currently having an exhibition of naturally dyed silk scarves and indigo dyed tapestries in Ginza at a small gallery. I am exhibiting with Mayumi Ikuta a lacquer artist. It is a simple event. I am not exhibiting pieces that I have woven from my own silk like kimono etc. It is too confusing to exhibit my high-end stuff with simpler work. Even mixing stencil dye and shibori as well as linen and cotton and silk pieces is confusing. Quite a few people who have caught me on TV in the past year seem have come expecting to see what they have seen on TV. They are a little disappointed because it is a natural dying exhibit. The work is still good!

A silent loom at work again.

This monstrosity of a loom that has been gathering dust in my house for five years is now working well. It came from Bangladesh with it's master who had it tamed perfectly, weaving a light cotton gauze as an exhibit for World Fair Trade Day in Tokyo. The master returned to Bangladesh and his loom found itself in the mountains of Japan. I felt sorry for it silently sulking in the corner all this time. With some work it is back at work. Ayaka is weaving some wonderful raw hemp and bleached paper thread. It was rough going weaving on the loom until it was fine tuned over and over. Now it weaves surprisingly snag free and quick.

Indigo New Year

I have a hydrosulphite indigo vat outside the entrance to my house. It is too cold in the middle of winter and I simply stir it a few days a week to keep in touch. It ices over when the temperature drops below minus 5. I'll dip in something that needs a single quick dip but it is next to impossible to spend any length of time in the cold dying. A few students have been coming to class and working on shibori the past few months. They couldn't wait for spring to dye their work so I put a tropical fish tank heater inside a tube of water and submerged it in the indigo to warm it up. We dyed yesterday outside on a freakishly warm day. The snow was melting and it was a muddy squishy mess...
But the joy of indigo dying took aver and the focus was on the dye and not our freezing feet.

Using a hydro-sulphate vat everyday in the warmer weather I sense what the pH is and how much pigment is left and how much oxygen has been introduced into the dye bath. Starting the season yesterday involved some guesswork to get the indigo in top condition after it sleeping for several months. The pH had dropped substantially and I added 150 grams of slaked lime and about 100 grams of hydro-sulphate and 100 grams of indigo powder. The condition was perfect and aside from terrifyingly cold rinse water from the outside tap the day went well.

These pictures of indigo drips on melting snow sum up the day.