Frozen Indigo Gives Cold Blues

The hydro-sulphate indigo vat outside the front door has a thin sheet of ice on it's surface. I stir it every few days. It is minus 7 at night. Freezing during this coldest week of the year. The slightest breeze of the frozen solid snow goes right through a down jacket.

Miho and friends were over today and they were itching to do some indigo dyeing. You can't be outside more than a few minutes with your hands in ice indigo water. I tried something new. A simple roll of cotton placed on the surface ice. Sure enough, the resulting blues were ice cold. I wonder if the handkerchiefs will keep any of the cold when they are used to wipe sweaty summer foreheads six months from now.

Motohiko Katano: Shibori Genius Extraordinaire

Geiger was pawing through my recently acquired postcard books on my Japanese craftsman hero, Katano Motohiko. He could instinctively know how much these meant to me and didn't nose them off the chair before he alighted. 

Tohei made these lion dogs years ago. They hang out as a group on tables and window ledges throughout the house. Sometimes paying homage to Hiro's flower arrangements  or eyeing a bowl of tangerines. What were they up to staking their territory on these particular postcards? Someone was trying to send me a message.

The lions on the postcards brought back memories of how I started with indigo in the first place.

The message might have been: Revisit  roots.

I studied Japanese ink painting for a few years when I came to Japan 24 years ago. Selling my first painting I figured it was a pity purchase.  A few dozen paintings later purchased by people I didn't even know made me think. It dawned on me that it was possible to make a living as an artist/craftsman of sorts one day.  It troubled me that I wasn't working at something that would not become a life project in my early twenties.

I was not cut out for painting by the simple fact that I didn't love it. I met an order for paintings with dread and grim resolve to do as well as I could. The process of creating the paintings was new. I enjoyed the isolation and weeks of focus watching the paintings evolve. But dread of not being able to get it right was something I felt I would never get used to. (Looking back twenty years I probably would have gotten used to the fear etc.)

After reading, The Unknown Craftsman by Yanagi Soetsu everything changed. Drooling at the thought  of  being a master craftsman of something Japanese.  I had to choose a path. The thought of becoming a potter or a carpenter was forefront.

In a bookstore one day I picked up a book on indigo and shibori. After looking at a few photos of Katano Motohiko's indigo shibori work and a description on how to grow indigo and ferment it into a dye I had a little epiphany in the grungy old Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku. Knowing exactly what I was going to do with the rest of my life,  closing the book and grinning I walked to the counter to pay for it.

To be an indigo dyer and work with textiles and use my indigo and textile experiences to be my own self-styled cultural anthropologist felt perfect. As my wallet opened and my hand pulled out the 5000 yen I smirked...what an investment. I get a lifetime of direction for the price of a few beer.

I found indigo seeds within a few weeks and I was on my way.   No dread.


To be a well-rounded indigo dyer in Japan you have to know how to dye yarn and cloth of all shapes sizes and material. You have to know how to do a variety of shibori shape resist techniques and dye them well.  (Katazome is more complex. I think very few indigo dyers really go deeply into this technique.)

With a general increased interest in clothing craftsmanship techniques, there has been a minor shibori boom in the past few years. Magazine articles, websites and books delving to different depths of shape-resist dyeing are easy to find. 

Shibori has a certain affinity with indigo as the oxidation part of indigo dyeing process can be played with to create subtle bleeds and nuances of blue in the folds and creases of shape-resisted work.
It sounds rather negative to say but the enthusiasm for the possibilities of shibori often outperform the technical prowess of the indigo dyer.

It is easy to liken shibori to haiku poems. Too much or too many makes you regret you ever even heard the words.  Yanagi Soetsu the founder of the Japanese folk craft movement asked Katano san to burn some Arimatsu shibori and from the ashes create a higher standard of shibori work.

The resulting shibori work of Motohiko Katano (1889-1975) is in a class by itself.  From 1957 until his death in 1985 he produced shibori work that was complex, subtle, proficient, distinctive, enchanting, intriguing, with no gimmicks and with intonations that can be so gentle, tasteful and subtle. (This sounds like a description of Jimmy Page's guitar playing.  The commonality of music and textile design is intriguing.)

It is a new year. Fifty is only one year away. Glancing to the side of life, certain walls are closer while others are farther away and warped in ways not noticed before.  With a break in carpentry work on the house, there is time to think and reflect and slightly adjust the trajectories of the various activities I juggle. Since revisiting Katano Motohiko's work that inspired me to work with indigo in the first place twenty years ago, I can't wait for the ice on the indigo vat to melt and get back to dyeing.

Tine and I were looking through the postcard books the other day and noticed that there was one technique that wasn't immediately apparent. We looked and speculated and started to sketch and stitch cloth and dye samples to figure out how he had done it.

Try number one was a failure, number two was getting somewhere. Try number three was dive bomb. (It reminded me of that old film on the first airplanes attempting to fly. They never took off and some comically folded on the runway. ) We will have them figured out in the next few weeks.

Perfect Indigo Stitches

Blue is the title of the Joni Mitchell album from 1971. It is the top female music album on the Rolling Stone magazine Top 500 Albums of All Time list. I've played it one zillion times.

"The Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals," Joni Mitchell told Rolling Stone in 1979. "At that period of my life, I had no persona defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy." With song after song of regrets and sorrow, this may be the ultimate breakup album. Its whispery minimalism is also Mitchell's greatest musical achievement. Stephen Stills and James Taylor lend an occasional hand, but in "California," "Carey," "This Flight Tonight" and the devastating title track, Mitchell sounds utterly alone in her melancholy, turning the sadness into tender, universally powerful art.

It is the work of a genius. Why? Well because there is, hardly a dishonest note on the album.

The edges of Serge's last linen piece had holes in them from opening the shibori tied linen roughly when it was wet.  He asked me how to fix them. I started sewing precisely with some store-bought cotton thread. I stopped. Thinking about perfection. No. It wasn't right. He was asking me questions about how and why to repair textiles. I couldn't answer in textile talk so I answered in music talk. (We both play the guitar.)

"Think of Joni Mitchell Blue. There is not a single dishonest stitch or weaving pass on this piece of linen you dyed. The dyeing is perfect. My stitching stinks. It is the dishonest note on the fabric."

I took out the stitches quickly before there were any trumpets blaring and clouds opening and angels appearing, found some handmade indigo dyed linen and stitched it up with honest stitches. Safe.

This year I hope not to backslide too much.

You can listen to the full album on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIEz0DP0FjA

I haven't posted the information for the spring workshop in a while. I have some openings as a few participants are opting for the autumn 2013 workshop.

Spring Indigo Workshops in Japan:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vKGq9uyqSqFRksQDh2Y0HPDhknzzdgQczv1rxwk7nwM/edit

Best Wishes for Your New Year.

2012 was the busiest year of my life. It was so busy that I didn't realize it was New Year's Eve until 8:00pm!  I thought I had one extra day to work on the computer. I spent the afternoon raking leaves for compost at the side of back roads with a very cold Mt Fuji looking down on the Momo, Geiger and Hiro and Shuji and I. 

The doggies had a fairly dramatic year roaming around in Radiationland Fukushima, being caught and introduced to their new home with me. 

This blog has become a part of my life. I am isolated from English speakers here and the readers comments and acknowledgement gives me a tremendous amount of energy with my work. I started the ten-day workshops and they have given me much. I spent so many years in semi-solitude just following my bliss and to see that there are people who are interested on what I have learned astounds me and deeply comforts. Thank you.

Bryan

Reeling Silk/ Spinning Wool

It is just bloody cold in this house in the winter. How did they survive in this place for hundreds of years with just small charcoal braziers?

Fedora sits in the kitchen reeling cocoons and Noriko sits in the sitting room spinning wool on a Saturday class. The rhythmic sounds of the wood machines adds some warmth.

Fedora bought some 'B' class cocoons to reel for warp thread as they were out of 'A' class cocoons. She makes gorgeous impossibly thin paper thread by hand for weft thread.  She has the patience of a saint to reel these rotten cocoons. One of the pleasures of reeling silk is to witness the clean perfection of the cocoons unravelling to find the chrysalis inside appear slowly as it's protective cocoon is reeled away meter by meter.

But the sheer magic of getting this pure white silk from the discolored cocoons is a marvel.

These are the cocoons that just wouldn't reel. I boiled them in a slightly high pH solution and made floss from them. Fedora will spin and dye this and combine it with her paper thread. 

Noriko's wool to be woven into a shawl.

Indigo on Linen. Perfection

 There has been too many mediocre pieces of cloth going into the indigo vats. It is time to start policing as it seems students cannot police themselves.  Grrrr. It is depressing to see mass-produced machine woven boring junk soaking up precious indigo.  It is better to dye a small scrap of good stuff than ten meters of stuff that will be much closer to the garbage bin a year down the road.

What is good stuff? 

This linen came from an old noren  curtain with an obnoxiously simplified rabbit-in-the-waves motif dyed with chemical red from the 60's.  It was hidden in a drawer in the new knit studio. Boiling it in some bleach with some slaked lime pretty much erased the rabbit. This stitching to create accordion folds is a useful shibori technique to master and expand on. It built on Serge's last piece's technique. 

Here he is proud of his most recent masterpiece. Serge also wants to become an indigo master. I am thinking of taking him on for a few years. From indigo seed to a perfectly crafted work. 

Kamei san was busy finishing up year end projects. She Persian knot wove/tied this small carpet to use as a pillow on the loom bench. It is so plush. Warp is camel and weft is naturally coloured wool.

There is plenty of warp left and she wove up a cool small leg warmer blanket.

She also spent a long time laboriously shibori stitching and tying round motifs on this Indian hand woven cotton material. Wonderful that she finished these up as the year comes to a close. I am sure she will have some beautiful projects finished in 2013 as well. Good work Kamei chan!

Indigo Guru Wanted

Someone shows up at your door and bows... "I've driven twelve hours to get to your house. I almost died in an accident I was so tired.   I have to talk to you. "

Just wanting to close the door and pretend it was an illusion, I snickered and replied... 'the guy you want is in another cave on the next mountain range.' (He doesn't speak English so my snarky wit just fell on the floor, waiting for me to step in later.)

"I want to be a live-in indigo disciple for two years."

Instant stomachache.

After a frown filled impatient coffee, a chill of the guilty MacNasties found me reluctantly asking him to drop by a few days later to try some indigo dyeing.  He had left 'a searching-for-the-foriegn-indigo-farmer-trail' around town and sure enough he had driven from Kyushu to find an indigo guru. He had met my good friends around the town at restaurants etc. and told them he was looking for me. His eager-beaver bushy-tailed enthusiasm filled the bench with supporters before I was even in the picture.

Requests for long-term live-in students who want to learn to grow and process indigo or learn to weave or farm silk do arrive in my inbox and occasionally at my doorstep. Not taking them too seriously, I make an effort to tell them to find something more productive to do with their lives. (Endlessly weeding mosquito-infested mulberry fields in sweltering summer days by myself, wishing to be and do anything, anywhere but there often sums up life .) These kind of requests are becoming more frequent,  I have yet to give any substantial  thought as to why. (I do have a few hunches though.)

When I asked him what and why questions he replied, "I have loved making things since I was a kid.
I want to learn a process like indigo dyeing from scratch... from a seed to a beautiful work of art. I don't care about making a living. I've read....."

Bob Dylan said,

 It's a feeling you have about yourself that no one else does.  The picture you have in your mind about what you are about will come true. It's a kind of thing you kind have to keep to your own self because it is a fragile feeling and you put it out there someone will kill it. So, It's best to keep that all inside.

I winced. These could have been the exact words out of my mouth when I was 25. (The indigo guru seeker's words, not Dylan's.)  I kept them to myself.  Recklessness or straightforward knowing himself. Hmmmm.

Shunpei will come by in early January to clean up the extra indigo field I have so he can start growing his own indigo next spring


Here he is with his first indigo dyed work. We used one of the stencils I picked up earlier last week.