The things I dye and weave do not have indigo colour.
I had little chance to encounter with indigo since I started my studio.
Nevertheless, I took no particular action against it and just kept doing my work without it. But when I moved my atelier to the foot of Yatsugatake and made a shelf on the entire wall, I arranged to put bluish coloured threads in the centre for some reason.
Although the arrangement was made by accident, there were only the light blue threads dyed with Kusagi (harlequin glorybower) in the centre, and whenever I saw the centre of the shelf being almost empty, my desire to “dye with indigo and weave with indigo threads” had grown stronger day by day.
Thinking back, the arrangement may have been to drive my desire which I had pretended not to notice.
I had a book called “Nihon no ai” (edited by Nihon Aizome Bunka Kyokai, published by NHK), which introduced an indigo artist who was running a studio of indigo dye, and I knew that he lived in the same town since I moved to here.
But I suppose there was a right moment.
I was led by a friend who knew about the indigo artist, and knocked at the door the other day. At my request, he kindly allowed me to dye threads and so it seemed to be that I could use this place from now on.
What’s more, he encouraged me to dye the sample threads that I brought by saying “why don’t you try?”
There were many vats in the studio and I caught sight of indigo and smelled its peculiar smell for the first time in a long time.
When I put my hands in one of the vats with indigo in it, the slightly thick texture and its warmth brought me back in a flash to the senses of apprenticeship 20 years ago.
Take the threads out of the indigo vat and then wash them with water, you will see the clear blue. From now on, there is indigo!
When I imagine to weave with those threads, Ah my heart throbs loudly.
