The Hishi — Japanese Ceremonial Silk Bed Runner Set, Diamond Lattice with Gold Rosettes in Taupe and Cream

A lattice drawn in steps, as if the loom had refused to make a curve. Then, at the centre of every diamond, it makes one.

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

Hishi — the diamond — climbs this cloth as a stepped zigzag in matte red, orange, green and purple silk over a warm taupe-grey ground, and each diamond it closes holds a hatched panel of cream. At the centre of every panel sits a rosette worked in a heavier, looped gold, the one thread on the cloth that stands proud of the surface. In side light the ground stays quiet and the rosettes alone catch.

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. Woven once for ceremony, the obi was cut at our Amsterdam atelier into a runner for the foot of the bed, 238 cm of it, falling over both sides of a 180 or 200 cm mattress, with three cushions for the head: one carrying the lattice, two in plain champagne silk, a plain field for the rosettes to shine against.

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