Amy Katoh
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”.
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”.
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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.
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.