The Rangiku — Japanese Ceremonial Silk Bed Runner Set, Wild Chrysanthemums under Crossing Bars in Taupe

Two designs on one cloth. The flowers were finished first. Then someone laid bars straight across them and did not stop for a single petal.

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

Rangiku — the wild chrysanthemum, its petals loose and uncombed — is drawn in fine silver outline on a mushroom-taupe satin, the heads large and scattered without order. Over them run straight bars in vermilion, mauve and gold, slightly ribbed, matte where the flowers are metallic. The two layers never negotiate: the bars pass over the petals as though the chrysanthemums were already there when the second design arrived. In side light the silver comes forward and the bars recede; in flat light it reverses.

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, 239 cm of it, falling over both sides of a 180 or 200 cm mattress, with three cushions for the head: one carrying flowers and bars, two in plain champagne silk.

Each cushion closes with an envelope pocket, the runner is backed in plain champagne 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.