In a post-industrial world where cloth and its manufacture are so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, we hope to reinvest fabric with meaning and, through the work of skilled hands, rediscover its many pleasures.

Reiko Sudo of the Nuno Corporation

Reiko Sudo is the creative force behind the legendary Nuno Corporation. A company that has combined traditional hand-weaving techniques with many innovations designed to manipulate the texture, hand, and presence of the cloth. When Reiko took over the Nuno Corporation, she was told she would be lucky if she could keep it going for another three years. It has now been running for more than thirty.

Speaking to a sell-out crowd, Reiko described her many cutting-edge processes. Such as using a culinary blow torch to burn through the fibers by hand in very specific locations. It was, she said, like making a cloth crème brûlée. Also shown were images of a time consuming origami technique so complex that it takes three skilled artisans an entire day to fold a single meter. The audience engaged Reiko with questions after the formal presentation and Reiko explained how she and the Nuno Corporation commission both hand-weavers and industrial mills to play a part in the production of extraordinary cloths.

Reiko gave her lecture after presenting the first workshop of the 2014 Textile symposium, the Sudo Salon. Students spent a full day with Reiko learning the philosophy and motivation through which cloth is deconstructed and remade to achieve imaginative and diverse results.

Reiko Sudo of the Nuno Corporation