CONTENTS

INDULGE textiles to buy, collect or simply admire 11 HOW TO Knit a Wool and the Gang Pussy Hat 13 BLUE SKY THINKING Indigo to die for by Polly Leonard 14 ON THE MAP The topography of Japanese Textiles by Tim Parry-Williams, illustrated by Jenny Bower

GLOBAL textiles from around the world 56 AIR BORN Lesley Millar journeys into the work of Naomi Kobayashi 67 JUNICHI ARAI Textile Planner, 1932 - 2017 by Tim Parry-Williams 68 THREADBARE Torn and tattered, Boro textiles of Japan by Jim Austin 76 EAST MEETS WEST Four Artists Pan Pacific Practice by Rhonda Brown 34 BLUE COLLAR Polly Leonard visits an Awa Yuzen workshop images by Peter Shaw

ANECDOTE textiles that touch our lives 30 PASSION FLOWER A passion for petals and insects by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada 38 WHITE OUT Snow-inspired textiles by Sophie Vent 41 BLURRED LINES Shibori Lineage by Sophie Vent 43 ANA LISA HEDSTROM In the fold with art and shibori

ATTIRE critical reporting of fashion trends 18 JEANS ON The spiritual roots of Japanese denim by Andy Thomas 22 UP TO SPEED Toyota driving denim production in Japan by Polly Leonard 26 IN THE MIX Sustaining Japanese Traditions in contemporary clothing by Sarah E. Braddock Clarke

INDUSTRY from craft to commerce 24 A CUT ABOVE The Secret Life of Scissors by Theresa Collenette 48 GRASS ROOTS The making of indigo dye by Rowland Ricketts 52 BOLT FROM THE BLUE Rowland Ricketts explores the power of indigo 60 PUT TO PAPER Polly Leonard witnesses the making of traditional washi paper 72 THROW IN THE TOWEL The democratic design of Chu-Sen dyeing by Teresa Durya Wong

In summer 2017, over 450 people from ten countries volunteered to live with a length of cloth dyed with Awa indigo. Solid shades of blue were used to focus attention on the indigo itself. Placed in boxes, the cloth lived in participant’s homes, sharing their lives for five months. Much like a pinhole camera, the boxes focused light onto the centre of each cloth, selectively dispersing the colour into the lives of participants while capturing their experiences and spaces in a faded mark.

In January 2018, the faded cloths were brought together for an installation of light, shadow, and sound at Tokushima’s Bunka-no-Mori. Suspended in a series of nine arcs, the cloths were backlit, allowing their colour to slowly seep into the space. A new sound work by Norbert Herber emanated from a series of 48 speakers made from the boxes used for the cloth. Arranged in a gradation from light to dark to light again, the piece evoked a sense of the natural cycles of life. In this, Awa indigo is created anew with the planting of seeds each spring.

In the gentle swaying of each cloth as visitors walked by, one sensed the power of the individual in the collective. While it is impossible to colour much with a single leaf of indigo, when many leaves are collected the astounding possibilities of indigo dyeing are unleashed. Awa indigo is not the work of one person growing indigo, nor one dyer transferring the colour to cloth. Rather, it is the collective result of every person who has worked to make this unique dye possible, historically, and still today. Rowland Ricketts

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and care. This kind of care in hand crafting is so important to us.’

Sashiko is perhaps most associated in today’s fashion world with Japanese boro.Throughout the Edo period when southerners discarded their indigo-dyed clothing, seafaring traders would also sell the fabrics to these impoverished peasants in the north. There, the woman of the villages used sashiko stitching to create patchwork farmers’ jackets (noragi) and futon covers (futongawa) that became ever more elaborately layered as they were passed down through the generations. Not unlike the geometric quilts made by the African American craftswomen from the Gee’s Bend community in Alabama, boro clothing became known as an abstract work of art.

Kapital has produced various boro pieces such as beautifully battered jackets, jeans and hats as part of its Kountry remake collection. ‘We were not purposely trying to make boro initially,’ says Kiro. ‘But because we were always experimenting and developing our denim processing techniques, what we were doing just became boro naturally, over time. We mastered the skills and techniques needed to make boro about ten years ago. Dyeing techniques, sewing skills and hand-stitching skills are vital for making it.You have to be persistent, and all of our craftsmen need to have a strong determination to make it.’

What was it that drew Kiro to boro? ‘I get inspired by old things,’ he says. ‘I especially found boro beautiful because of its patchwork and sashiko techniques, the beautiful blue gradation from the aging indigo, and importantly the sense of mottainai; non-waste and re-appreciation.’

Kiro goes on to elaborate on the meaning of mottainai, explaining that ‘the Edo period in Japan respected recycled culture and nourished the philosophy. Mottainai means taking good care of things with respect, making it last long, not wasting and re-appreciating it. Through food, clothing and shelter, mottainai is always with us, every day.’

The sense of mottainai also resides in the way denim obsessives treasure a favourite pair of jeans. ‘The jeans themselves have history. When they get torn, I think you will feel something,’ says the founder of Full Count, Mikiharu Tsujita in Weaving Shibusa. ‘By wearing them everyday, having them when you go out somewhere travelling, dining, dating, the jeans will eventually become part of your life. The vintage jeans are cool because they are dwelled in not only in a physical aspect but also in terms of emotions.’ It’s what drove Devin Leisher to make Weaving Shibusa. ‘What I really wanted to show was that these jeans have a heart and soul,’ he says. ‘In my mind, these garments are kind of like organisms in themselves.’

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And in these days of mass consumption and waste, the Japanese denim and indigo obsessives have much to teach the world. ‘Since ancient times in Japan, it has been believed that spirit and life reside in everything,’ says Kiro. ‘And the Mottainai philosophy will always reside in our culture at the Kapital factory.’ Andy Thomas Images cour tesy of

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Far Left: Salvatore Ferragamo, Ready-to-Wear Runway Collection, Spring / Summer 2018 Left: MSGM, Ready-to-Wear Runway Collection, Spring / Summer 2018 Right: Courtenay Pollock, Holy Kaleidescope Batman Mandala, 213 x 243cm

The spectrum of amateur to artisan is present in all crafts, including tie-dye. Counter-Couture showed the mesmerising works of western dyers, including Marian Clayden and Courtenay Pollock. Pollock, in particular takes the psychedelic craft as a point of departure to create expansive artworks, famously championed by the Grateful Dead. He spent almost 50 years developing a unique form of folded geometry based on intuitive practice with little knowledge of traditional methods. As shibori may also be carried out on an amateur level in Japan, we can level the playing field by discussing both crafts in the gallery, their professional context, as Laurien chooses to do with his study of shibori in Swedish craft communities. The gallery space encourages an openness of discussion, and allows for the possibilities for cultural lending: ‘Artists have long been taught the attitude of looking upon the cultural heritage of the world as an open archive where one can study, borrow and reuse whatever one thinks is interesting.’

For Laurien, heritage is unavoidably linked to theories of globalisation, with ideas of ownership becoming harder to decipher in the modern world as we continue to connect in much faster and easier ways than ever before. In an attempt to understand this complicated and sensitive subject, Laurien asks us to imagine a more fluid textiles craftscape; one that exists beneath global boarders. In this unlikely way, the resurgence of this pop craft may in fact be beneficial to the heritage of shibori, keeping the discussion alive and through association, reinvigorating our awareness of the ancient craft. ••• Sophie Vent irstview

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Left; Seiko Aoyama in the late Edo to Early Meiji Period, 1800s,Each 6 panel folding screen is 156 x 366cm The right side/ screen depicts Yamagata region including benibana farming and dye making as well as Harvest festival scene in rural area; the left side/screen depicts shipping of benimochi to Kyoto showing the benibana trade in the city.

Below; Illustrations of cochineal collection in José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza, cultivo, y beneficio de la grana…, (Essay on the Nature, Cultivation, and Benefits of the

Cochineal Insect), 1777. Colored pigment on vellum.

speculation about Japanese women hiding their passion for life under layers of silks, to be revealed only in moments of intimacy.

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In the Two Lives, Many Lives series, which I began in 2017, I use cochineal red to evoke the precarious balance of life and death, creation and destruction that is always present, even when making textiles. Fine silk thread is obtained by boiling silk cocoons that contain a living worm, and we extract scarlet pigment from inside the cochineal insects. I transformed the ‘carrier rods’ (a by-product of silk reeling that forms when reeling machines snag filament on a rod) into small creature-like pieces. I find new life in this waste silk and add red as a reminder that these materials came from living beings. The brief stories of these reds reveal cultural, economic, and aesthetic characteristics of people and places. My art is inspired by the importance of and longing for shades of red.

Bringing safflower-dyed colours into our 21st century life is a difficult task, as the colours can be rather ephemeral against direct UV rays. But the fascination with the traditional practice and the obsession with the colours obtained from the flower petals were revisited by LA based Korean American designer, Christina Kim, and featured at Sonia Park’s elegant boutique, Arts and Science, in Tokyo in 2017. Christina was guided by Dr. Kazuki Yamazaki as she designed a beni-coloured fashion collection for us to enjoy and cherish, in all its shades of red. Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada llection,

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