Journal
Essays on Japanese textile history, craft, and the culture of ceremonial silk — alongside guides to caring for and living with ceremonial silk objects.
The Eloquence of Small Things
We are drowning in words. Not ideas — words. The distinction matters. An idea arrives once, if you are lucky, and changes the angle of everything. Words arrive in thousands,...
The Eloquence of Small Things
We are drowning in words. Not ideas — words. The distinction matters. An idea arrives once, if you are lucky, and changes the angle of everything. Words arrive in thousands,...
The Sleeping Surface
There is a garment that most people who have never worn a kimono have never heard of. It is the nagajuban — the underrobe worn beneath the kimono, next to...
The Sleeping Surface
There is a garment that most people who have never worn a kimono have never heard of. It is the nagajuban — the underrobe worn beneath the kimono, next to...
The Grammar of Colour
There is a word in Japanese — iro (色) — that means colour, and yet it also means, in its deeper register, feeling, desire, the visible world. Colour, in the...
The Grammar of Colour
There is a word in Japanese — iro (色) — that means colour, and yet it also means, in its deeper register, feeling, desire, the visible world. Colour, in the...
The Patchin
The patchin is the traditional Japanese bag handle: two turned wooden rods, joined by the silk body of the bag. The silk loops over the rods and the weight of...
The Patchin
The patchin is the traditional Japanese bag handle: two turned wooden rods, joined by the silk body of the bag. The silk loops over the rods and the weight of...
The Cloth That Remembered Everything
I keep a furoshiki on the hook by my door. It is not particularly old — maybe forty years, cotton, indigo-dyed somewhere in the Kansai region. I use it for...
The Cloth That Remembered Everything
I keep a furoshiki on the hook by my door. It is not particularly old — maybe forty years, cotton, indigo-dyed somewhere in the Kansai region. I use it for...
Cherry Blossom Season in Japan — What It Taught...
There is a week in Japan — just one week, sometimes less — when the entire country holds its breath. The cherry blossoms open. The sakura. Not the deep pink...
Cherry Blossom Season in Japan — What It Taught...
There is a week in Japan — just one week, sometimes less — when the entire country holds its breath. The cherry blossoms open. The sakura. Not the deep pink...