The Atelier

The Renaras atelier sits on IJsbaanpad in Amsterdam. Silk arrives here folded, as it has been kept for years. We unwrap it, study it, and in time cut it, and what was made for one life is given another.

Renaras designs and reimagines existing Japanese ceremonial silk into contemporary pieces for daily life. This is our mottainai: the bringing of new imagination into a living tradition.

Our practice

We work only with Japanese ceremonial textiles: obi, some woven in the Nishijin tradition, kimono silks dyed by hand, and the fukusa and furoshiki carried quietly through generations. Linen variants, asa-obi, are worked into the same range, and described as Japanese ceremonial linen.

Each textile is examined for its weave, its structure, its condition, before any blade touches it. Some pieces wait months in the atelier before we know what they should become. That waiting is part of the work. The decision is not ours to rush.

What we make

For the home: wall tapestries, hung from wooden bars at top and bottom; lumbar pillows closed with an envelope pocket, so no metal touches the silk; table runners and placemats; framed textile panels; and, newly, bed runners and decorative cushion sets.

To carry and wear: knot bags, bags with patchin wooden handles in the Japanese tradition, ties, and other pieces that bring ceremonial silk into an ordinary day.

The Renaras passport

Every piece leaves the atelier with its passport: a small handmade record of the silk's first life and the transformation it has received, signed and dated in Amsterdam. It is the buyer's to keep, or to pass on with the piece.

Where to find us

Renaras pieces are available at renaras.com and through Pamono, Chairish, and Decorative Collective. A small collection made from the remnants of the silk we cut, nothing wasted, is kept in our Etsy shop

Japanese ceremonial silk, designed and finished at the Renaras atelier in Amsterdam.

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