壺草苑
Early 19th century travelers to Japan described the color of the land, the color of the people Japan Blue. Indigo was everywhere. In the work clothes of farmers, banners and signs, townspeople and their bundles, indigo was the common language.
It is still a highly prized color today and gaining rapidly in appreciation. Taking a hint from the layers of shades of blue hills of Ome surrounding it, Kosoen indigo dye workshop translates the colors around it onto a whole range of blue textiles: cottons, silks, ramies and heavy linens. Their tool box of techniques is filled with shibori, katazome, stencil dyeing, board clamp dyeing, tsutsugaki, freehand designs achieved by squeezing paste resist from a tube like a frosting applicator.
It is still a highly prized color today and gaining rapidly in appreciation. Taking a hint from the layers of shades of blue hills of Ome surrounding it, Kosoen indigo dye workshop translates the colors around it onto a whole range of blue textiles: cottons, silks, ramies and heavy linens. Their tool box of techniques is filled with shibori, katazome, stencil dyeing, board clamp dyeing, tsutsugaki, freehand designs achieved by squeezing paste resist from a tube like a frosting applicator.
|
Kosoen is a workplace of highly refined indigo artisans who achieve transcending shades of a luminous blue that never grow old. Their 12 indigo pots are filled with their own indigo recipe for a solution that they have fermented from composted balls of sukumo, indigo leaves, by their own recipe, indigo leaves, grown and dried laboriously by indigo growers in Tokushima. This is the real thing, though there are many imposters who get away with calling simpler processes with chemical dyes “Indigo”. True indigo needs stirring everyday leaving an incandescent purpley flower to attest to its vitality. Giant brown indigo pots stand like sentries outside Kosoen in front and in the garden. And if you are lucky, you might arrive in time to see the morning’s or afternoon’s dyeing hung out on racks to dry, - a thrilling sight! Solid deep blues, marbleized blues and whites that have been board clamped on silk and ramie gossamer, shibori dyed T shirts, straight deep blue jackets. It is hard to believe that Ome too is Tokyo with old houses, trees and streams and stone saints, Jizo, and sake breweries still holding out against urban sprawl.
The Murata family, descended from an old tradition of Ome Jima dyers, a specialized skill of weaving stripes, founded Kosoen in 1990. Trained in Tokushima, the capital of Indigo in Japan, Hiroshi Murata is the dye master and overseer of the workshop. His older brother is the business manager. They teach aspiring young dyers in the indigo craft that Hiroshi learned over 35 years ago in Tokushima from Nii san, one of the 5 principal cultivators and dyers of indigo. |
Kosoen is distinguished not only by the beautiful tones of indigo blue they achieve, but also by their use of innovative textiles that have been created in the surrounding area of Hachioji. They continue to develop new exciting textiles based on centuries old techniques of dyeing and weaving. Besides indigo, they also use persimmon and charcoal and other natural colors to dye their cloth. But their blue is supreme! While indigo can sometimes be mundane and lackluster, Kosoen blue soars higher, digs deeper and last longer than other indigos.
To have one of Kosoen’s creations only makes you want another, and another. Together you will only grow old with grace and character. |
Amy Sylvester didn’t know what lay ahead when she ventured to Japan after graduating from college at an innocent and ignorant age of 20 at the invitation of an exchange student from Japan she had chanced to meet when she was 16, the first Japanese she had ever met. She is still here!
During the first year’s homestay, she felt instantly at home despite language and food barriers. In the intervening years, she became Amy Sylvester Katoh with constant travel, adventure with that first Japanese friend, now husband, 4 exciting children, dogs aplenty, and houses too numerous to count. Japan resonated with some part of her that had not been activated before. The culture certainly, but also the humor, the modesty, the kindness, the crafts! The unknown! There were so many surprises and discoveries and unexpected encounters that made days rich and full. In the fullness of time she and her generous and amusing husband Yuichi commissioned an old farm house to be moved from Fukui Prefecture to the wilds of Karuizawa by an enterprising man from Gifu, Yoshihiro Takishita who had reconstructed an old minka on Genji Yama in Kamakura for himself and his adoptive Father, and wanted to restore more. Yuichi and Amy set about creating a home for their young family filled with vintage indigo, old farm tools, baskets and other things that were being discarded in Japan’s rush to be “MODERN”. Amy and Yuichi proceeded in the opposite direction and continued to collect the OLD: textiles, tansu, and stones that were fast being discarded. Japan’s rush to change its skin led Amy to worry that old crafts were being lost in favor of modern western designers, with labels. Labels and brands were suddenly important after a centuries old tradition of “unknown craftsmen” |
This alarmed Amy and two other friends, Carol Miles and Fujiko Hara who teamed up to create Blue & White, a tiny shop in Tokyo’s fusty old neighborhood near Roppongi where they worked to encourage craftsmen to redirect their work to what was functional and useful in every day life. It was a haphazard name, but it served to keep them focused and limited their attention to a palette of just two colors. Two brilliant and utterly Japanese colors.
What started as a naiive and idealistic project, has now, after 43 years, become a nexus, center of activity of people who make things with their hands and people who seek them. Dyers, sewers, basket makers, potters, papermakers. We continue to encourage craftsmen/ shokunin san, of all types, to create things that address the needs of every day life. To be relevant. For 43 years Blue & White and Amy have sought to connect makers and users in a smooth dialogue of making and using them.
For 43 years, Amy has travelled throughout Japan seeking the best and most interesting, and sometime quirky crafts of the land. What an odyssey it has been. Wonderful stories and friends have formed the blue & White family.
Lucky Amy! Thanks to a generous and supportive husband, and long suffering children who have been forced to consider Blue & White as their fifth sibling, Blue & White has become a life’s work that will hopefully continue to bloom/flourish and gather craftsmen and new friends in its indigo net.
For 43 years, Amy has travelled throughout Japan seeking the best and most interesting, and sometime quirky crafts of the land. What an odyssey it has been. Wonderful stories and friends have formed the blue & White family.
Lucky Amy! Thanks to a generous and supportive husband, and long suffering children who have been forced to consider Blue & White as their fifth sibling, Blue & White has become a life’s work that will hopefully continue to bloom/flourish and gather craftsmen and new friends in its indigo net.