Cocoon Day with Karin

Karin's approach to indigo is different from mine. She is a note taker. A careful planner.   Occasionally frustrated by the fickleness of indigo and the huge downpour of cultural and technical information her Scorpio intelligence boxed it all up for future reference. With one eyebrow raised and a warm slow smile interspersed with a wince and thoughtfully pursed lips, she surveyed a months worth of work as she packed up in preparation for her trip to Kyoto yesterday.

Indigo and it's friends shibori and stencil dyeing to take time. Time.... to deeply understand the history and potentials and limitations of indigo itself and the Japanese techniques that developed with indigo over a long history.
I have no doubt that her Scorpio spirit will have it all mastered in a few years. I can see that indigo and the peripherals are her calling.

Today we looked at silk. She had never seen a cocoon before.

I showed her several techniques of how to reel and make different silk threads and options for expanding those methods to make even more varieties.

She already had some very good shibori techniques in her repertoire. 

I believe that this work is the genten from which many more will spring. 

Indigo Knits

I have been working with my 1950's sock knitter for almost a year now. I took off the heel function and have been knitting tubes. Cashmere, wool, cotton, silk and linen. Looking for something that felt right. Not just texture wise but something I would want to work with. (Jean, I should have listened to you from the start. Linen is magic. Indigo dyed linen is sublime.)

The machine knits two thin linen threads and a cotton thread beautifully. 70% linen and 30% cotton. I take the tubes and stencil dye on them. I will be having an exhibition in Vancouver in October. It has been a long time since I spent time near the ocean.Waves and more waves.  Some of them are Edo period (mid 1800's). They are easy to find at antique markets and can be re-lacquered and netted and used. I drew and cut out some others, seaweed and drooping branches over the water. After dyeing the tubes in indigo ten and sometimes twenty times in indigo, the paste is removed and I re-stencil a different pattern on the linen. Then the tubes are dyed seven times in persimmon tannin. Placed in the sun every morning to absorb the UV rays and turn a crisp brown. The second pasting is removed and the tubes are cut up and sewn  back up on my old industrial overlocker.

Pleated Shibori

I found that the stitching/pleating and binding techniques work as a good introduction to shibori. There are dozens of these pleated Japanese shape-resist techniques and many more variations on each of them.

There is a razors edge you have to balance on when you walk down the old shibori path. It is easy to lose your footing and fall down and get tangled in the hippie growing on the downside. You can trip and skin both knees with the quickies and getting temporarily blinded by tradition for tradition sake. Depression can set in and you lose your way with dogmatic adherence to dorky motifs. And god forbid you get messed up with rubber bands and pre-stitched shibori kits.

If you are a designer and want to incorporate some shibori into clothing or interior design products this family of techniques has advantages. You can get relatively consistent results. It is beautiful. It walks down the razor's path safely.

The measuring and pleating are done in order to make the accordion shape. It can be done at intervals of five millimetres  to five centimetres. Once the accordion is made it can be bound to itself or a flexible cord or restitched with endless possibilities of pattern. Tension can be played with to create many patterns behind patterns.

I measured out one centimetre and then two centimetre intervals and had Ogata san stitch this one up.  It had to be spray dampened while organising the pleats to keep them in place. We are binding all these pleated types on three ply (we ply it) rice straw ropes we get from the local hardware shop. This one was dyed ten times in the indigo, taken off the straw rope and bound with the opposite side up and dipped another ten times. Remember to wrap the straw rope with kitchen wrap or the straw will stain the cloth an unpleasant yellow.

5 centimetre interval and a pattern stitched in. Luisa...perfect.

Both sides of the pleated cloth were bound with straw rope.

Luisa's beautiful pleated piece.

One more look at Henri's piece:

And Mini's clean masterpiece that is often around my neck:

A lot of pleating going on around the house these days. There are a few about to be dyed in the next few days. I'll keep you posted.

Soy Milk and Soot Under Dyeing for Indigo and Black Black Dye

You can get a more sublime steel blue colour with indigo if you under dye with soot. It has been done for centuries in Japan.

Noguchi san, the katazome master living a few stations from me, paste resists both sides of his yukata material and then brushes on a sizing of soot and soy milk. The finished kimono has a more sophisticated blue colour than just a plain indigo dip. He also dyes the happi coats for festivals and festival banners using this dyeing technique.

We have been playing with soy milk soot dye and getting excited about the possibilities at home but I wasn't sure of how to get the pure black colour. Today, Julie, Karin, Luisa, Liza, Serge and I made the pilgrimage to Noguchi sans magical time-slipped studio and had the master show us how he makes the blackest black for the kanji lettering on festival coats. It was a dream-like experience as always.

He soaked the soy beans in water the night before. For the initial sizing of the black, the soy beans were lightly smushed in the serated-sided mortar with a wood pestal. A cup of water was added to the mash and again lightly stirred.

Some of the mash is put in a cloth bag and squeezed. The liquid was the consistency of a thin milk. In this milk he submerged a small bag of soot and squeezed and squished that around until he had a very muddy dishwater colour. This was then painted on the parts we wanted to dye black.

When this dried we painted on a more concentrated version of the soot/soya mixture and left it to dry. And then repeated this a few times until we had the black we wanted.

We brought along some white antique linen and had Noguchi san's son Kazu paint some kanji on for us. Kazu is the seventh generation stencil dyer. He had a son early this year. I hope he will be the eighth generation.

The future eighth generation katazome master?

When the ink had dried on the cloth we outlined it with rice paste and let it dry while we had lunch.

Dyed with indigo. We were there to learn the technique today. The masterpieces will follow shortly. 

Beautiful fermenting indigo. Smelled sweet and heavenly today. We arrived back home and found our own private corners to process a day full of experiences and thoughts. To all of you have visited Noguchi san's studio with me over many many years...your spirits were all there watching with us today. 

First Try Shibori Techniques Don't Always Work Perfectly

Julie was excited that her two-centimeter and one-centimeter interval pleated shibori projects turned out so beautifully that she wanted to try a 5 millimeter version. I agreed and she spent several days stitching and pleating and meticulously binding the cloth. She had brought a gorgeous large antique linen sheet from France. We ripped it into eight sections and decided to do eight different pleating techniques. Afterwards she will sew it back together for a bed cover.

When it came time to open the indigo dyed piece we were relieved to see that it looked amazing. But after washing, it lost the nuances and ended up looking rather plain. One problem was that the cloth did not allow the indigo to bleed in from behind. There were no light blue ghost like lines between the strong lines. The weave and thickness of the thread were just tight and thick enough to prevent the indigo coming through. The overall binding was tight enough to not allow enough oxygen into the folds to bind the indigo that did seep through.   The folds were bound tight enough so that the indigo was not able to be oxidized and therefore bind to the cloth. The nuances washed out as their 'indigo feet' were not firmly dug into the cloth. Grrrrrrr.
Julie was not deterred for a second.  She re-dyed a second pattern on top. It turned out good. Shibori misses can be salvaged.

Julie is a butoh dancer. She can see the essence of indigo and cloth.  Period. It is wonderful to have her here studying. I can understand and appreciate her approach to work. She is making such deep and beautiful and meaningful pieces from the very start.  The techniques are important. But the 'Dylan' is more important. The Hijikata https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcaot0-deck and Ono https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-roXj8UBIA mentalities are necessary to get beneath the surface of the indigo...in the green and go up for a breath of blue. Thank you Julie for being here. I learn from the students. The designers and the artists. It is so interesting to watch the different approaches to indigo and weaving. It takes time for each individual to get traction and propel themselves foreword. I have to stand back and watch for a while before I can be useful. The days are hot and peaceful and productive. 

Anneke left yesterday. We all miss you. The Geiger is sulking. Hugs to you. It is lonely without you here. Five months will fly and we can meet again. No lotus, but maybe some snow.

b   xxoo

Ten-Day-Workshops for Autumn 2013 and Spring are Full

Thank you for so many enthusiastic emails concerning the ten-day textile workshops and the longer term stays. I had to start turning people down yesterday. I originally figured I would have ten members per workshop  but  eight is a much easier number to handle. The logistics seem to hit the difficulty curve suddenly around seven. When talking to a group of people it is easier to make it interesting and keep the story going if you can keep eye contact. It is tough with twenty eyes.

The ten-day workshops are a lot of fun. I enjoy them and having the members as guests in my house. I want to enjoy the people and the teaching and not burn out. The basic content remains the same. Up until now the workshops have been fresh due to new faces and the different energy and hopes each participant brings. I don't want to strangle the fun out of it through over repetition.

The rainy season starts in June in the mountains here in Japan. This old farmhouse keeps me fighting to keep it looking fresh in good weather. Damp tatamis and stinky monsoon indigo make it impossible to win the battle.  That makes tagging on an extra spring workshop tough. (And although I am dropping the ball my Florentine friend, I am praying I find the energy to get it bouncing again for June!)

OK. Thank you friends.
Bryan

PS. The lotus at the front door are blooming. I used some of Snoopy's bones when they came back from the pet crematorium for bone meal. Snoopy is paying us a visit. :"^.

Many Kinds of Indigo Students

Winnie and Hilary .... a mother and daughter artist tag-team dropped by for three weeks and turned the house upside down. It was a a bit of a shock on the second day when it suddenly sank in, that when they told me they had never worked with textiles, they were telling the truth. Never.
Winnie is a ceramic artist and Hilary just finished her art studies at NYU in New York. Japan wouldn't need any nuclear reactors if they could find a dozen Winnies and somehow rigged them up to a generator and set them at an indigo vat. The amount of energy released created a critical mass and we all were caught up in the vortex.

I had to change the regular teaching approach. They are super creative and can make overambitious decisions in a severely split second and actually pulled their complex projects off.

Each student who shows up here to learn about indigo and textiles has a different background and different goals. Some know much more than I do about textiles. Some know nothing about Japanese history and craftsmanship. Some don't care. Some are so excited about the new world of indigo and Japanese textiles. They are up until the morning stitching and carving and working on projects. 

 It takes a few days of talking to get an idea of who someone is, what their backgrounds are and what I can teach them.  It can be taxing but I enjoy it immensely. So many interesting people. 

My one-month August group is showing up one by one. Julie, a young French Butoh dancer has been here a week. She studied Japanese dance for years both here in Japan and abroad. She studied corset making in Paris. I could understand her approach to work quickly. She loves and needs to get to the essence of the material through being close to it. Long complex procedures do not intimidate her. The contrast between the creative powerful explosions of Winnie and Hilary's work and the intimate concentration of Julie's work gives me plenty to contemplate and absorb energy from. These are very very busy days at the house. I am somewhat tired and being resourceful with my energy while my batteries are being charged by those around me. 

I came home to the house being wrapped in freshly dyed indigo. I'll never forget it W and H. Thank you for the energy and generosity. Bryan