The cloth cabinet
Cloth is the one craft here where the pattern is settled before anything is made. The thread is measured, tied, dyed and counted first. The loom only lays down what the thread already knows.
The girl and the white spots
Inoue Den was twelve, in Kurume, when she noticed white flecks in an old indigo garment washed pale. She pulled it apart, tied off bundles of thread before dyeing to make the flecks again, and wove them. That is kasuri: the pattern made in the thread, not printed on the cloth.
By her late thirties she had more than a thousand pupils. Kurume kasuri is still tied by hand and dipped in indigo again and again. The slight blur at the edge of each mark is how you know.
The obi that squeaks
In 1241 a Hakata merchant, Mitsuda Yazaemon, came home from Song China with its weaving methods. What grew from them, Hakata-ori, is woven so firm that an obi tied from it stays put all day, and the silk squeaks as it is pulled tight. There is a word for that sound: kinunari.
Samurai wore it. Sumo wrestlers still do. The Kuroda lords sent Hakata cloth to the shogun as tribute, in a pattern of Buddhist ritual tools that is still woven today.
Warmth, one stitch at a time
In Tsugaru, in the far north, farmers were not allowed to wear cotton. Their hemp let the wind through, so women stitched cotton thread into it, row after row, in patterns counted over the weave. Kogin made the cloth warmer and stronger, and it was almost the only way they had to make it beautiful.
Furoshiki began in the bathhouses, as a cloth to spread out and wrap your clothes in. The same square carries a gift today, and the knot is part of the present.
Cloth
Dyed before it is woven, so the pattern has to be planned in thread.
Ask us to look
Tell us what you are after. We live in the country where these things are, and we will go and look for it.
- You describe itWhat you are after, roughly what you want to spend, and whether there is a date it matters by. Vague is fine — “a clay bell for the year my daughter was born” is enough to start.
- We go and lookMorning markets, dealers we know, auction houses, and families clearing an old house. Sometimes the thing turns up the same week. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes it never turns up at all.
- You decidePhotographs in daylight, measurements, condition described plainly including the chips, and what it would cost delivered to your door. If it is not right, you say so and that is the end of it.
Next cabinet
Paper
Sold without eyes. Knocked over on purpose. Carried back at the turn of the year to be burned, and bought again.
Open the cabinet →