"I grew up in a small country town, where every spring and autumn we looked forward to the arrival of the travelling salesman with his bundle of kimono fabrics. Hiding behind my mother, aunt and grandfather, I would watch, spellbound, as he presented these beautiful textiles, one after the other, on the tatami mats. That was probably when I first dreamt of one day becoming someone who makes beautiful fabrics. I do believe that my childhood dream was the major motivation behind my becoming a textile designer." - Sudō Reiko
My first visit to Japan House situated on London's Kensington High Street, to investigate the first showing in the UK of another exhibition of textiles, this time featuring the pioneering work in the field by acclaimed designer Sudō Reiko as Design Director for the textiles company Nuno. Reiko is known for pushing the boundaries of textile production and championing new methods of sustainable manufacture. Reiko works with materials as diverse as silk, hand-made washi (Japanese
paper) nylon tape and thermoplastic, and technologies derived from
Japanese hand crafted traditions such as caustic burning, weaving and
dying. The exhibition space here at Japan House is sleek, compact and minimally designed befitting the Japanese aesthetic. The exhibition space impressively displays the textile implements, tools of the trade. Reiko's thought processes through her personal drawings and sketchbooks, and the production techniques of the textiles through the clever use of the technology of the various factories and artisan workshops creating fabrics for Nuno are also showcased. Like the Italian textile manufacturer MITA (whose exhibition I visited earlier this year here), Nuno are concerned with sustaining traditional textile techniques and craftsmanship, but utilising specialised modern methods to inform and create new fabrics. The exhibition displays a series of large-scale installations and clever art projections depicting original drawings and designs (some of which resemble the rectangular block compositions of Sean Scully paintings, and the fabric designs of the Bauhaus weavers workshops here). Production equipment and techniques featured include an approximation of a loom for the jacquard weaving process, and Mongami punch cards which control the movements of the warp yarn in the loom, embroidered washi papers, and heating synthetic materials to create modern textiles. There are knowledgeable attendants on hand to give in-depth explanations of Nuno's processes and techniques. After viewing the exhibition installations visitors are invited to visit Japan House's impressive theatre to view a series of short films documenting the particular making processes of the fabrics in various workshops across the different prefectures of Japan. Having absorbed the films, it was back upstairs to examine a presentation of the variety of designs of Reiko's fabrics for Nuno displayed as a vast patchwork curtain. They were really interesting examples, and I couldn't help but be struck by the similarities to elements of my own work both in technique, where I embroider into paper, or in certain fabric pieces which actually share the same titles of some of my art pieces. I came away both enlightened and inspired.
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