How hand-dyed tenugui is made

Hello and Welcome to www.nipponcraft.com,

I would like to show you how the hand-dyed tenugui (and also your original ones if you wish to) are produced by the artisans at "Miya-zome" tenugui production facility.

"Miya-zome" factory is the Nipponcraft's business partner with skilled artisans who produces beautiful hand-made tenugui.

Miya-zome tenugui

Miya-zome factory entrance

"Miya-zome" is the tenugui and yukata wear cloths hand-dyeing technique that is inherited in Utsunomiya city, Tochigi Prefecture in Japan. Utsunomiya is a major city in the northern part of Greater Tokyo and the city's population is 51,800 as of 2015. The city is a gateway to the world heritage of Nikko shrines.

There is a small and clean river called "Tagawa" running through Utsunomiya city and some dyeing factories used to operate along the river, because lots of fresh water is necessary for washing dyed cotton cloth. Now, only one factory remains. This factory was established in 1905 by the Nakagawa family.

Award certificates are displayed on the wall

This Miya-zome factory was awarded with many prizes for making good hand-dyed tenugui and yukata wear.

KATAGAMI and Tenugui

To make up a tenugui, the first step is the production of a paper-made stencil (called "KATAGAMI") for the design. An artisan hand-cuts the design carefully by using carving knives based on the design pattern.
(These stencils are made of washi papers dipped in persimmon tannin. The hand-cutting workmanship needs lots of concentration and patience. This traditional technique dated back approximately one thousand years ago in Japan.) 





Secondly, an artisan produces colors for tenugui fabric. The color production is also a hand-work (or eyes-work)!  An artisan reproduces colors directed by a designer by mixing several base dyeing materials. The designer often directs colors to the artisan through color swatch set  (called DIC in Japan, Pantone could be understandable case by case). Some designers send printed design and color on a piece of paper to tell what color they want on tenugui fabric. The artisans have skills of color reproduction and can handle hundreds of colors through their eyes. They work on the color mix by spending several days to achieve close colors. These mixed color materials will be dyed on white tenugui fabric.

Making pastes-banks on KATAGAMI

The third step is hand-dyeing called “Chu-sen”.  The dye artisans place "KATAGAMI" on the tenugui fabric and create banks with pastes to divide each color sections. 

"Chu-sen" History: This multi-color dye method was first originated in Osaka to pursue an economical Kimono or Yukata wear. Before the "Chu-sen" invention, silkscreens were necessary for the number of colors on a design, and as a result the production cost became very high. Silkscreen creation cost a lot. Or, for a very expensive Kimono, artisans hand-paint complex design on Kimono with the traditional "Yu-zen" method in Kyoto. So, some of dye artisans in Osaka came up with this idea of dyeing multi-colors with less number of silkscreens and getting rid of hand-painting work.

Paste materials are made of seaweed and mud.

Pouring dyeing materials on tenugui fabric.

Artisans pour dye materials that are created in the former step on the tenugui fabric, and then pump the material with a vacuum from underneath. The left photograph shows that the artisan is ensuring the correct color material to be poured by watching the final result in front of him.
Approximately 20 pieces of tenugui fabric are overlapped and are dyed at the same time.



Washing tenugui from river water

Finally, tenugui are washed and cleaned up.

Dried in sunshine

Tenugui are dried under sunshine naturally not to be shrunk.

Yukata fabric dried under sunshine

 

We hope this article has provided you with good information of the hand-made tenugui.

Thank you for visiting our blog!

Roketsu-zome noren curtain making process

Hello and Welcome to www.nipponcraft.com,

I  visited Kanbayashi-san's noren factory in Kyoto last week again to take photos of making process of Roketsu-zome (batik) noren curtains. The factory is producing the off-the-shelf noren curtains and also accepting individual orders from customers.  The off-the-shelf noren curtains are shipped though dealers like us.
This Kanbayashi-san's factory is located 20 minutes walk from Kami-Katsura station of Hankyu Railway.

When I visited Kanbayshi-san (the owner of the factory), he was sewing noren curtains by himself.  It was late afternoon, so he was hurrying to finish up the work of the day. He must be a multi-talented man and he handles every process of noren making.

Kanbayshi-san's two sons are the successors of the factory and the second son showed me how the roketsu-zome (batik) noren curtains are produced.
First of all, he needs to layout customers' design on noren curtains. To copy the design, he traces the paper on which the design is printed by lightening from bottom.

Then he pastes wax on the design parts for protection from being dyed in the afterward process. The protected parts will be white off.

Then the pasted wax are dried naturally with air. (Sorry, I missed to ask how long it takes to dry the wax.)

To make the colors for dyeing noren, he mixes base color powders (close to red, green and blue mix). He needs a precise measure for mixing colors to reach to desired color. The weight of powder is measured to the level of 0.1 gram.
The factory keeps its own "knowledge base" (actually a notebook) for color creation. In this knowledge base, the various mix ratios are stored to reach many kinds of colors. They know the best color mix ratio that makes noren curtain look most beautiful.
Anyway, it is an "analog" (not digital) work to create colors of customers' desire.

Then he pours fixed amount of water to make dye material. This was also a hand-work.

Now, he is painting with the dye material he just created. The rest of the part where he is painting is wax protected, so it will not be dyed. The result will be a back circle design on white base color.

In the left photo,  the base color of noren is dark blue and the designed parts (birds and bamboo leaves) are white off.
After washing and removing wax, the final noren curtain is ready for shipping to customers.














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Thanks at the Japan Block Fair and Travel in USA

Hello and Welcome to www.nipponcraft.com,

Thank you very much for visiting our nipponcraft's booth at the Japan Block Fair on May 20th. We had a wonderful time with you and we enjoyed having conversations with many people. We are based in Tokyo, so it was very meaningful for us to have direct conversations to understand customers and the people living in NY. The weather was beautiful and the temperature went up to over 80 degrees. So we had many guests at the Japan Block Fair.

Nipponcraft's booth at the Japan Block Fair on May 20th, 2012

Many visitors to the Japan Block Fair

BJAFA (Brooklyn Japanese Family Association), which is an NPO  at Brooklyn, organized origami schools for children and we visited there twice to teach how to fold origami papers to the children.  Either farther or mother of the children are Japanese, but they don't have much chance to learn origami folding. We taught how to fold cranes, air planes and hats and the children were very excited with flying the air planes they folded by themselves. We had a wonderful time with the children to share origami experience.

At Brooklyn's Pacific Library

Children very pleased with flying origami air planes

At Brooklyn's elementary school

To see more American cities, we made a round trip to Boston. We walked along Freedom Trail to learn American Independence history and we also found many beautiful and old architectures, which we never have a chance see in Japan. We were very much impressed with the beauty of Boston and historical mood there.
My Japanese friend suggested me not to miss sea food and clam chowder at Boston, so we visited one of the sea food restaurants at Back Bay. Many people were having dinner with lots of conversations and we enjoyed the energetic atmosphere of an American restaurant. The cuisines were also wonderful!

At Granary Burying Ground

I shot a photo of Acorn street, Beacon Hill

Fish and chips were great!

For getting to Boston, we took Amtrak Acela Express. It was my first time to ride express trains in US. I heard a rumor that American trains were delayed all the time, but the Acela Express we took were not delayed for both services of going and returning. They were on schedule. Actually, the returning train from Boston delayed 10 to 15 minutes but it was not a severe impact on our itinerary. The express trains were quiet and comfortable and I will recommend my Japanese friends to experience Acela Express.
We took first class on the way back from Boston to NY just to experience what it is like. I was amazed that the first class seats were almost full and I was also impressed that meal and drink were served. The meals were good. We never have such nice services on Japanese express trains! Japanese express trains are more business like.
Another thing I found different was that the track number of trains were not decided until 10 minutes before their departures. In Japan, all the track numbers of departing trains are fixed per train services. It is ridiculous to say what is right about this, but what is important is to enjoy the custom or cultural difference.

First class meal on Acela Express; it was good!

On the last day in NY, we visited the Metropolitan Museum to see Japanese arts. When I personally visited this museum in 2003 the Japanese arts section was closed due to reforming. I was impressed that many Japanese arts are displayed at the museum. I also saw many European paintings at the museum but one day visit may be too short to see all of them. It is a huge museum!

Japanese Byobu (painted room partitioning)

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