The Kohaku — Japanese Ceremonial Silk Bed Runner Set, Flower-filled Hexagons in Amber

Amber keeps whatever fell into it. This one keeps chrysanthemum, plum and grasses, drawn in a single thread of gold.

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

The ground is kohaku — amber — warm and saturated, and over it run hexagonal cartouches drawn in a fine line of gold and silver, each filled with chrysanthemum, plum blossom and grasses, with small sprays scattered in the spaces between. The gauge is fine and the relief low; nothing on the cloth raises its voice. In side light the metallic outlines lift off the amber like frost on a window, and settle back when the light moves on.

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, 239 cm of it, falling over both sides of a 180 or 200 cm mattress, with three cushions for the head: one in the amber lattice, two in plain terracotta silk, a shade deeper than the runner.

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