the MAIWA JOURNAL

Friday, May 22, 2009 No comments

Thursday, May 21, 2009 No comments

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 No comments

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 No comments

Monday, May 18, 2009 No comments

2009 Maiwa Textile Symposium
Workshop

Instructor Morimoto Kikuo

Under the Khmer Rouge almost all of Cambodia’s traditional culture was wiped out. A great poverty of information resulted – everything from basic farming to textile dyeing and weaving techniques was lost. Yet, at one time Cambodian textiles were the envy of Southeast Asia.

It became the goal of Morimoto Kikuo to search for the last seeds of knowledge and to replant them. The result is a revival of Cambodian traditional knowledge and the founding of a self-sufficient village where all dye and weaving resources may be found on site. This workshop provides an opportunity to meet and work alongside Morimoto Kikuo as he instructs the class in the use of natural dyes and their application to Cambodian silk ikat. Students will gain direct technical knowledge but also learn some of the history and philosophy behind the remarkable Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles. Morimoto Kikui joins us from Cambodia.

Morimoto Kikuo

Morimoto Kikuo was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1948. In 1975, after a five-year apprenticeship, he started his career in yuzen, the Japanese textile technique of painting and dyeing kimono fabric. In 1980 he made his first visit to Bangkok where he discovered Khmer traditional silk ikat textiles at the National Museum.

In 1983, Morimoto moved to Thailand to serve as a volunteer in refugee camps in the northeast. In the following years he worked encouraging natural dye traditions and in 1990, as a collaborating researcher for The Textile Museum (Washington, DC), he compiled a report entitled “Traditional Dyeing Methods in Northeast Thailand.”

In 1995, Morimoto was asked by UNESCO Cambodia to serve as a consultant for the revival of traditional silk weaving. He remained in Cambodia where he started another project, this time to raise silkworms in Takaor village, Kampot province.

In 1996, Morimoto founded IKTT (the Institute for Khmer Traditional Textiles) in a suburb of Phnom Penh. Four years later the Institute moved to Siem Reap and added a workshop for weaving and dyeing with the goal of enabling elder craftspeople to hand on their skills to younger generations.

In 2002, Morimoto purchased five hectares of land north of Angkor Wat to begin his next project, the establishment of a self-sufficient weaving village. He now lives and works there as he oversees a project named “Wisdom from the Forest.” The village grows locally everything needed (dyes, cotton, silk) to create traditional Camodian Ikat. In 2004, Morimoto received a Rolex Award for Enterprise.

Bibliography

Bayon Moon: Reviving Cambodia’s Textile Traditions

Thursday, May 14, 2009 No comments

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 No comments

2009 Maiwa Textile Symposium
Workshop

Instructor Michel Garcia

Michel Garcia joins us from the Botanical Garden of Dye Plants in Lauris, France, to share some special techniques for dyeing and printing with extracts.

Some of the difficulties of using powdered dyestuff (such as a high concentration of madder root on wool) can be avoided altogether if the dyer makes an extract. An extract also presents a wealth of opportunities as it can be applied directly to a piece. In this workshop students will make different soluble extracts and use them to dye wool both as a primary colour and as the basis for a second over-dyed colour. The class will use extracts to print directly onto cotton using blocks and paintbrush. A variation will be presented that permits printing with indigo.

Printing with extracts can be expanded to mordants and mordant/dye combinations. Thickening techniques will be covered so that the student learns to make the dye the right consistency for the technique.

There are many possibilities for creating an indigo vat with natural indigo. Generally speaking, the natural ways using compost leaves or fermentation are difficult and slow. During this workshop, some new possibilities for making a natural vat will be presented using henna, dates, figs, or grapes as reagents. Students will be able to easily establish a fast natural vat that can be used to dye any natural fibre.

Michel Garcia

A French national born in Morocco, Michel Garcia was nineteen when he first discovered natural dyes. Since then he has followed his love of both plants and pigments. In 1998 he formed the association Couleur Garance (Madder Colour). The association hoped to connect young ecologically sensitive artisans with the substantial expertise of an older generation of dyers. Under his direction, Couleur Garance produced over twenty monographs on natural dyes and dye plants.

In 2002 Michel founded the Botanical Garden of Dye Plants at the Château de Lauris. In 2003 an international forum and market for natural dyes was added. A year later a resource centre was established.

In 2006 Michel handed over leadership of Couleur Garance so that he could further pursue his interest in colour and dye techniques. He has published three titles on natural dyes showing the range of shades available and how to obtain them.

Bibliography

De la garance au pastel, le jardin des teinturiers

Couleurs végétales: Teintures, pigments et encres

Plantes colorantes, teintures végétales

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 No comments

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 No comments

Monday, May 11, 2009 No comments

2009 Maiwa Textile Symposium
Workshop

Instructor Betsy Sterling Benjamin

Author and master rozome artist Betsy Sterling Benjamin arrives from New Hampshire to teach this course in Japanese Batik. Rozome has caught the interest of fibre artists from around the world. This course gives an overview of traditional techniques and allows you to consider applying them in your own creative work. For those new to the Japanese techniques, a number of traditional wax and dye application methods are introduced. These include Sengaki (wax drawing), Hibi ware (wax crackle), and Shikibiki (wax trailing) as well as brushing, rolling, sprinkling, stamping, and stencilling wax. Students will use both traditional and contemporary tools and materials. The use of soy wax provides an exciting variation.

In addition, the course introduces Japanese dyeing techniques such as bokashi, the controlled dye shading that produces such luminous results on silk. This class is ideal for silk painters, fibre artists interested in resist techniques, and those fascinated with Japanese textile techniques. Demonstrations of all processes, historical background, and slides and video of contemporary work being produced in Japan and abroad are included. Daily concentration practices will also be part of the class.

Betsy Sterling Benjamin

Betsy Sterling Benjamin is an award-winning international artist, researcher, and author specializing in Japanese textiles. Her book The World of Rozome: Wax Resist Textiles of Japan (1996, 2002) is the first book in English on the topic and is a classic on the fine art of wax resist.

She has lectured on Japanese costume and wax-resist textiles at the Smithsonian Institution, Oxford University, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the Japan Foundation, Kyoto. She is the coordinator of the World Batik Conference–Boston 2005 at Massachusetts College of Art, and curator of “The Rozome Masters of Japan Exhibition” that toured the USA in 2005 – 2006.

For over eighteen years Betsy lived in Kyoto, Japan, where she taught at Doshisha and Kyoto Sangyo Universities, participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and wrote on textiles for the Mainichi Daily News and other publications. The recipient of grants from the Japan Foundation, the Sasakawa Foundation, the Daiwa-Anglo Japanese Foundation, and the New Zealand Center for Japanese Studies, she now teaches at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Sunday, May 10, 2009 No comments

2009 Maiwa Textile Symposium
Workshop

Instructor Michele Wipplinger

For 2009 this very popular workshop has expanded to a full five days.The Colour Institute is devoted to an intense exploration of colour perception, aesthetics, dynamics, theory, and use. Working from diverse historic and cultural sources, this class moves through classical concepts of colour to ideas of contemporary artistic and designer practice. The workshop will conclude with insight into the world of colour forecasting and the development of colour trends.

Michele joins us from Seattle to explain how methodologies such as colour bridging, composition, and creation may be learned and mastered. Colour systems such as NCS and Pantone will be presented. Theories developed by Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, and Albert Munsell will provide the tools to understand the chromatic realm with specific reference to textiles. Students will learn how colour functions in various environments and how it interacts both with other colours and with components such as texture and lighting. The Colour Institute will include exercises with yarns, colour chips, paintings, and drawings. Students will learn how to problem-solve colour mistakes and develop a deep understanding of value and saturation and how these affect finished work. As sessions progress, the focus will shift to student design problems and challenges. Students will apply the concepts of the class to their own work.

This inspired class is a must for designers, artists, or anyone interested in the complex world of perception, meaning, and interpretation behind the use of colour.

Michele Wipplinger

Michele is president of Earthues Inc., an international colour and design consulting company specializing in ecology and the artisan. She has over 30 years’ experience in the field of natural design and ecological process, with an emphasis on natural dyes. She lectures worldwide and creates an exclusive line of silk shawls hand-painted with natural dyes.

Michele has been a consultant in Nepal for the development of colour and natural dye processes for the Tibetan hand-woven carpet industry. She has developed products and consulted on colour for Aveda, Origins, Martha Stewart Living, Esprit, Terra Verde, and Nature Conservancy. Michele is on the Executive Board of Directors for Colour Marketing Group and received the United Nations award for her environmental stewardship on the development of an ecological natural dye process for the American textile industry.

Friday, May 08, 2009 No comments

Thursday, May 07, 2009 No comments

Wednesday, May 06, 2009 No comments

Tuesday, May 05, 2009 No comments

Monday, May 04, 2009 1 comments

Sunday, May 03, 2009 No comments

Saturday, May 02, 2009 No comments

2009 Maiwa Textile Symposium
Workshop

Instructor Jane Stafford

We were very pleased to get this workshop proposal. The synergy of ideas expressed here inspires us – it’s the reason we hold the symposium. Instructor Jane Stafford explains the motivation for this workshop ...

I have always been so inspired by the exquisite handwoven fabrics that
are produced for Maiwa. They bear witness to the beauty and elegance of plain weave, elegant use of colour, great design, and ingenuity. This workshop has been developed based on the loom-controlled techniques used in Maiwa’s handwoven textiles. They are simple structures pushing the boundaries of plain weave in fine yarns. Students will weave eight fabrics over four days.

Students will need to have basic weaving experience and their own table loom. Warps will be prepared in advance and sent to the students before the workshop. During the workshop students will migrate from loom to loom thus gaining access to a wide variety of structures and weaves.

Students will also receive a variety of weft materials so that they can prepare bobbins.

Prerequisites: Basic weaving knowledge and a table loom.

Note: The weaves that have inspired Jane come mostly from Bengal. Examples may be found in the Maiwa store and in the exhibition On The Banks of the Ichhamati (pg 98). On Sunday October 25 Bappaditya Biswas will give a lecture (pg 28).

Jane Stafford joins us from Salt Spring Island. She has had a loom named in her honour (and designed with her recommendations and input). See the “Jane” loom produced by Louet at www.louet.com/spinning_weaving/jane.shtml.

Jane Stafford

Jane started weaving in 1978 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Her studies took her to Banff, Alberta, where she studied and taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts. She moved to Salt Spring Island in 1988 and opened her business. Jane Stafford Textiles produces a line of mohair blankets, silk scarves, and chenille stoles. Jane also teaches a variety of weaving workshops at beginner and advanced levels.

Friday, May 01, 2009 No comments

Friday, May 01, 2009 1 comments

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