There is something I have often thought about while working with textile dyeing. It is this: “I want my work to be Mingei rather than art.”
If I want to paint a picture, I can paint on canvas; if I want to create a stylish design, I can use a computer. But if I am going to take the trouble to use my hands to “draw on cloth”, I do not want to lose sight of what that means. So I have asked myself again and again: What is cloth to me? I always arrive at the same answer: it is something “closely connected to everyday life”, such as clothing and bedding.
At the same time, when I look at so-called “old cloth”—textiles worn through years of use in everyday life—I sense something close to art. I find myself drawn to the skills that arose from daily life and have been passed down through generations. Wanting to come closer to that kind of beauty, I have recently been spending more time on slow, painstaking work.
This is a furoshiki that I plan to dye with a simple shibori pattern called “mokume shibori.” In this technique, the cloth is stitched and gathered in rows less than 1 cm (approx. 0.39 in / 0.033 shaku) apart to create a pattern resembling wood grain. It is patient, painstaking work. It truly has the beauty of Mingei, but completing it requires considerable concentration and time, so my eyes and shoulders are already stiff. Even so, I am continuing little by little, at my own pace. Please look forward to seeing the finished piece.
* “Mingei” is a word coined in 1925 by Yanagi Sōetsu, together with Hamada Shōji and Kawai Kanjirō, to describe the beauty found in craft objects used by ordinary people in everyday life and in the handwork of anonymous artisans.