The Kodachi — Japanese Ceremonial Silk Bed Runner Set, Grove with Paired Birds in Slate, Rust and Ochre on Ivory

No gold. Not a thread of it. Everything this cloth has to say, it says in colour.

A Japanese ceremonial silk bed runner set, runner and cushions cut from one obi at the Renaras atelier in Amsterdam.

Kodachi — a grove of standing trees — is woven here as a pictorial repeat on undyed ivory: stylised trees, birds in pairs, small animals, gourds, seed-heads and scattered leaves in slate blue, rust red, ochre, brown and a muted green. The weave is flat and level with the ground, nearer to tapestry than to brocade, and the whole surface is matte, so it takes light evenly and gives nothing back but colour. It is the quietest cloth in the Renaras bed collection and the only one without gold.

Renaras designs and reimagines existing Japanese ceremonial silk into contemporary pieces for daily life — this is the Renaras mottainai: the bringing of new imagination into a living tradition. Woven once for ceremony, the obi was cut at the Renaras atelier in Amsterdam into a runner for the foot of the bed, 219 cm of it, falling over both sides of a 160 or 180 cm mattress, with four cushions for the head: two carrying the grove, two in plain ivory silk.

Each cushion closes with an envelope pocket, the runner is backed in plain ivory silk, and no metal touches the silk anywhere.

The set arrives with the Renaras Passport, a small handmade record of the silk's first life and its transformation, signed and dated in Amsterdam.

One silk. One story. One piece. Never repeated.