REVISITING A QUIET MANIFESTO

FOR THE PRESERVATION OF CRAFT

— PART ONE —

A 35-YEAR JOURNEY WITH MAIWA

Over thirty-five years ago Charllotte Kwon formed a company and opened a shop. The shop was located in a new community of artisans that had formed on Granville Island. The Island, through its concentration of fine artists, printers, bookbinders, papermakers, potters, theatres, retailers, students, and industry, redefined itself as the cultural heart of Vancouver. The company was called Maiwa. In Cantonese and Mandarin “maiwa” is a word used to name the language through which art speaks. Maiwa. Beautiful language.

Halfway through our journey, in 2000, we published A Quiet Manifesto for the Preservation of Craft. The ideas that appeared in that tiny book have matured and blossomed. Our thirty-year anniversary seemed the perfect time to revisit those ideas. 

OUR NATURAL

DYE OBSESSION

Colour is unlike anything else. As an artist, to make colour with natural dyes is to experience a direct connection with your materials. And each of these materials, each dyestuff used, can be a doorway to a new world.

Putting natural colour on cloth involves the use of leaves (such as indigo and henna), barks and woods (logwood, osage), roots (madder, aal), flowers (chamomile, marigold), fruits and nuts (walnut, myrobalan, pomegranate), minerals (alum, iron), and insects (cochineal, lac). These are just some of the classic materials that have been used for thousands of years.

The aromatic steam that rises into the air from the dyepot, especially when working outside on a cool morning, is one of the most compelling aspects of the dyer’s studio. Indeed, working with natural colour is such a sensual experience that many artisans work with natural dyestuff for the sheer pleasure of making the vat. The saturated colours of the immersed materials are also highly photogenic—as is the entire dyeing process.

Maiwa’s obsession with natural dyes is well known. What is less well known is the work that we do behind the scenes each time a shipment of natural dyestuff arrives in our warehouse.

Our role is a bit like that of a master vintner who evaluates multiple grape harvests to make an exceptional wine. We do a complete set of sample tests to evaluate the shade and strength of our shipment. Dyes from natural sources will change with each season. If there has been only little rain one year, the concentration of dyestuff in the plant will alter. So we often combine and blend stocks from multiple years to ensure that the raw dyestuff will yield consistent results.

At Maiwa our policy is to acquire the raw dyestuff in its most elemental form (wood chips, roots, petals) so that we can ensure purity. We then process it into the form (usually a powder) that works best for the artisan dyer. We use natural dyes extensively in our own production, so we can ensure that each package contains a product we would be proud to use ourselves.

THE

INDIA STUDIO

The quality of artisan cloth. The quality of an artisan’s life. Two reasons we have been making slow clothes for decades.

Since the time of the industrial revolution, cultural critics have claimed that mass manufacturing destroys a fundamental connection between life and meaning. Today, many don’t know how cotton grows or who farms it; few understand how it is dyed, woven into cloth, and sewn into something to wear. To fill this void modern clothing is heavily branded—and the story of the brand fills the space that used to be filled by the voice of the cloth itself.

Handloom is a remarkable technology. Paradoxically, the world’s most complex weave structures are created on very basic looms. It is the simplicity of the loom that permits the weaver to intervene at every throw of the shuttle. And it is this intervention that transforms the weaver from labourer to artisan and gives the cloth its own voice.

But cloth that can sing is just the beginning. At Maiwa’s India Studio we work to extend our philosophy of artisan cloth to all aspects of clothing production.

If we can choose between a printed piece of cloth and a plain one—we will choose the printed. If we can choose between handloomed cloth and mill-made—we will go for the handloom. Every time we make these decisions, we keep a group of artisans working at their craft. These are often multi-generation artisan families who are beginning to enjoy an international reputation. Craft is about trade. If there is no demand, even the most skilled craftsperson must abandon their work.

We seek to turn modern clothing upside down. We don’t want to raise outputs and cut costs and build factories. We want to work alongside artisans in a village setting. We think such partnerships are the only truly sensible long-term business plan. Do we believe in combining work and pleasure? Absolutely. We want to create a work environment that we would be happy to live in for generations to come.

Did you know: at Maiwa we hand-cut all our fabrics? Because we work with natural dyes, our stock cloth cannot be longer than 5 meters. Our dye studio is right beside the sewing studio. Bicycles and hand carts are used to move cloth from place to place. 

For the cooler months of the year, Maiwa’s India Studio hosts a number of staff from Vancouver. During this time our two worlds come together. Long days are spent in the company of block printers, pattern drafters, sewers, tailors, weavers, and craftspeople of all kinds.

The staff also hit the road to do research and to connect with more remote artisan communities. When staff return to Canada, the stories are inside them. Part of their work will be to share these stories with the rest of the company and with the customers in the shop.                 

HOW MUCH CHANGE

CAN ONE SMALL COMPANY MAKE?

DID YOU KNOW THAT MAIWA SUPPORTS:

* Three communities of block printers using natural dyes working in the ajrakh, dabu, and kalamkari traditions

* Three groups of embroiderers in Rajasthan working in appliqué and kantha stitch

* Seven tribal embroidery communities located in Kutch working in traditional styles

* One Banjara embroidery community located in South India reviving traditional work

* Two communities of kantha embroiderers located in West Bengal and Bangladesh

* Three weaving communities located in Odisha working in traditional ikat

* Three weaving communities located in Kutch producing traditional weaves

* One weaving community located in Uttarakhand working on new wool-silk innovations

* One weaving community located in Madhya Pradesh working on new innovations

* Three weaving communities located in Assam working with wild silks and linen

* Five weaving communities located in West Bengal working in jamdani and khadi

* Three weaving communities located in Telangana working in traditional ikat and plainweave

* Two groups of bandhani tiers located in Kutch and in Rajasthan

* One community of leatherworkers located in Rajasthan

* One community of bellmakers located in Kutch

* Communities of silk, cotton, and natural dye farmers

Maiwa’s orders of organic cotton keep a wide network of farmers working throughout India. Did you know that to buy organic cotton Maiwa must purchase the crop before it is even planted? Each year we order an average of 60,000 metres of organic cotton.

Maiwa encourages weaving communities to maintain or adopt natural dyes. Working with a network of artisans in India and procuring dyes for resale places Maiwa at the centre of one of the largest markets for natural dyes in the world.

FOR THE

LOVE OF INDIGO

Decades ago, Maiwa began looking for blue. The word “indigo” was everywhere, but the legendary dyeplant proved much more elusive. It had been a little over one hundred years since the German chemist Adolph von Baeyer had discovered the chemical formula for indigo and worked out a way to synthesize it industrially. During that time farmers who grew indigo and those who knew how to extract it became increasingly rare.

Indigo has great longevity: archeological evidence of its use dates back to Indus valley civilization in the third millennium BCE. Ancient cultures—Greek, Roman, Chinese, Japanese, Indian—all created distinctive textiles based on indigo blue. Remarkably, indigo was also used in Central and South America, where it was independently discovered. Blue seems to be both universal and at the same time deeply tied to the culture that uses it.

Indigo is the first dye we use at Maiwa. When exploring a new relationship with block printers, or scaling up a weaving or dyeing project, indigo is first. In contrast, when we are teaching, indigo is last. The experience of working and dyeing with indigo is so powerful, there is such magic in the process, that if we began with indigo, the students would never move on to the other colours.

It took us years to trace indigo blue back to the fields where it was growing. Each year we would get a little closer. One day, fifteen years ago, someone recommended that we make a trip to Andhra Pradesh in South India. We arrived at a farm and—there it was. There were the fields, the oxcarts working early in the morning to bring in the fresh cut indigo plants. There also were the cement extraction tanks. Decades of processing indigo had stained them a deep blue—as dark as the tropical night.

Maiwa, after thirty years, has formed an intimate relationship with indigo. We have worked with historians like Jenny Balfour Paul, researchers like Dominique Cardon, and botanist-chemists like Michel Garcia. We’ve brought together block printers from Rajasthan and the Kutch desert and placed them in the same natural dye studio as ikat weavers from the south and eri silk farmers from Ethiopia. Indigo connects them all.

— PART 2 TO FOLLOW NEXT WEEK —