50% off
Beautiful handwoven wool coats.

Each day we stock the store with fresh items for our sample sale. If you come down this weekend you will still see many new things in the Main Maiwa store. Also we have some fantastic stock of men's shirts included in the sale. Naturally dyed, preshrunk, hand blockprinted shirts marked down from $69.95 to $15. For full information about the sale see our previous blog post here.

A weaver in Odisha winds tussar silk off the bobbins to prepare a warp for the loom.

Many areas in Odisha (formerly Orissa) are suitable for the cultivation of tussar silk. Tussar, Antheraea mylitta is a very large moth. In contrast to bombyx mori (the Chinese silkworm most of us are familiar with) the tussar caterpillars spend their larval stage outside in trees. As the larva grows the farmers move it from tree to tree to ensure that it has a fresh supply of leaves.

The worms (caterpillars, really) are beautiful and the most juicy green colour. They are eating machines, growing constantly as they change from the tiny worms that emerge from eggs to the massive creatures that are ready to begin spinning a cocoon.


The tussar moth is also raised in Assam and we encountered it in the moth stage when we visited in 2008. The silk is an amber colour and makes for very distinctive textiles. Entire villages will specialize in the cultivation, spinning and weaving of tussar silk. Threads are wound by combining the strands from many coccoons. They are often reeled by rubbing over a smooth surface such as the belly of a pot or the weaver's thigh. Thigh-reeling is popular and you can see artisans on the front porch, chatting and reeling throughout the day.

A village artisan reels tussar silk on his thigh.

Tussar silk in hanks dyed and ready for weaving.

Banjara women among the sunflowers.

Team Maiwa is in Southern India at the moment doing some research on the Banjara. It has been a week now, going from thanda to thanda. A thanda is a Banjara settlement. Historically these were temporary as the Banjara were nomadic, but increasingly thandas are becoming more permanent. We have been tremendously fortunate to be able to travel for a little while with Jan and Laxmi Duclos. Jan has lived most of his life in India and his wife, Laxmi Naik Duclos, is herself a Banjara woman and a master of the art of embroidery.

Tomorrow we leave Karnataka. Our days have been humid, dusty, and absolutely incredible.

Women bring out their embroidery to talk about patterns, mirrors, and cowries.

Jan has led us to some beautiful houses also, with wooden beams and traditional structures.

Last night (October 24) was the concluding event of the Maiwa Textile Symposium. New this year is a lecture/event that focuses on the work of the Maiwa Foundation. Maiwa's founder, and director of the foundation Charllotte Kwon, gave a talk that focused on a visit to the Living Blue project in Bangladesh.

Charllotte situated the project in contrast to the industrial garment production which dominates the national economy. The talk was illustrated with photos and video clips showing the work that the foundation did in troubleshooting dyeing techniques and looking over the systems of craft production.

Charllotte gave a passionate appeal to look to craft, not as charity, but as the natural resource of a culture that is located in the head and heart of an individual.

The Threads lecture was also an opportunity to launch the new Foundation book. A hardcover book documenting the work of the Maiwa Foundation since its inception.

The book is available to order online here: http://www.maiwa.com/home/books/books/index.html

Here are some preview pages of the book.

On Tuesday October 22nd Lorraine Roy delivered her lecture, The Sylvan Spirit. It was a walk in the woods with a person who has spent a lifetime among the science and art of trees.

Lorraine has tasted the twigs of the cherry birch and found them reminiscent of mint. She has studied the role of mycorrhizal fungi and found an astounding symbiosis connecting young and old trees. She has plumbed the depths of roots and spent many hours beside the native plants of the riparian zones of Southwestern Ontario.

And ... she has turned these experiences into a wealth of textile works created in her own unique method. She took the audience through the process and illustrated the results. Images showed the development of her work and also how she works with commissions.

At the conclusion of Lorraine's talk she presented a shortlist of her favourite books and some of the references she mentioned in her lecture. We are happy to give that list again here:

Lorraine Roy's Shortlist

“The Year of the Flood” Margaret Atwood
“Paradise of God”  Norman Wirzba
“Tree”  David Suzuki
“The Unfinished Universe”  Louise B. Young
“Seeds of Woody Plants in the United States” US Dept of Agriculture
“Native American Ethnobotany”  Daniel E. Moerman
Suzanne Simard, Mother Trees, UBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8SORM4dYG8
Test Tube Data: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21570671-archives-could-last-thousands-years-when-stored-dna-instead-magnetic

Lorraine Roy's website: www.lroytextileart.com

Janusz Wrobel’s website: www.januszwrobel.com

On Wednesday October 16th, Rachel Meginnes delivered her lecture - "The Plainweave Thread."
The audience was mesmerized by the progression of Rachel's work and the fastidious attention to detail that was payed to the fabric itself. Rachel works to remove threads, distress the cloth and then build it back up again with paints and surface treatments. The work can take weeks and it continues until she is satisfied that the piece is complete.

Rachel's journey was a fascinating one and she has often restructured her artistic practice to suit the locations in which she finds herself. A frequent phrase was "I needed to push myself." Indeed Rachel's body of work has been built up through a series of investigations as she interacted with new locations or landscapes. Often her starting point is a grid. "It's where I feel safe." she has said.

There was a lively question and answer after the lecture as people wanted to know more about both her work and her method of working. You can find Rachel's pieces online here: www.plainweavestudios.com

Rachel adapting her work to paper, while working in a friend's studio in San Francisco.

A series of works where Rachel has adapted her working methodology to combine fabric and paper.

The pinboard at Rachel's workshop in the Maiwa Loft.

On Tuesday October 15, Akemi Nakano Cohn delivered her lecture - Journeys and Traces: Art and Life through Katagami. In the talk Akemi presented an evocative journey that began with her family's traditional japanese costumes. Akemi discussed her art and how certain commissions were the result of attempting to translate a particular inspiration.

Akemi concluded the talk by showing some of the traditional tools used in her work and holding up both the finished cloth and the stencils used to make the distinctive patterns. She explained how the the stencils were made and cut and how they were an early mass production technique.



Our next lecture is The Sylvan Spirit with Lorraine Roy on Tueday October 22nd. Tickets are still available here.

Our furniture - where it comes from - how it's made.

Dedication is everything - a student piece made while studying in Japan with Bryan Whitehead.