An Archive You Can Still Make Things With
YUJINART’s textile archive is still working stock. Collected by a family business founded in 1927, its antique Nishijin-ori fabrics can become the robe of a doll, part of a wall piece or a surface in a contemporary interior. Keeping the cloth and using it pose different questions. Each cut commits part of that finite stock to a particular work.
The Tokyo brand works with a second inheritance, too: the materials, molds and techniques of kimekomi doll-making. Its recent collaborations place those resources in settings as different as a BEAMS JAPAN collection and a Jägermeister flight jacket. The interesting question is what survives the move—and what becomes possible because of it.
Teaching was part of the family business
In 1927, Kinu Kameda founded Hyakka in Asakusabashi, Tokyo. The business specialized in kimekomi dolls, but it also supplied materials and kits, enabling customers to complete dolls themselves. Faces, bodies and fabrics depended on different specialist processes. Kyoto Nishijin-ori and Yuzen textiles were among the materials.
Hyakka eventually opened 50 classrooms across Japan. Instruction was part of the business, alongside the finished work. A technique could continue on a student’s table as well as in a professional workshop.
Yu Hatori, Kameda’s great-granddaughter, represents the fourth generation of the family business and founded YUJINART. She studied fashion history and textile science at Japan Women’s University. Her work draws on both the family’s doll-making resources and the accumulated textiles, finding new commissions and collaborators for them.
Pattern made in the weave
Nishijin-ori takes its patterns from the arrangement of dyed warp and weft, rather than a design printed onto finished cloth. Metallic threads and complex woven structures can give the surface depth and a changing luster. The effect matters beyond the textile’s historical association with fine dress: a cut section can carry a great deal of visual information into a small object.
YUJINART’s archive has been accumulated since 1927. Age adds another consideration to the choice of fabric. Hatori is working with a particular stock of old textiles, rather than ordering an indefinitely repeatable surface.
Cloth becomes part of the form
In kimekomi, cloth is tucked into grooves in a shaped body. The technique originated at Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto. Traditional doll bodies use paulownia wood powder and wheat starch paste, with layers of gofun, a white pigment made from ground oyster shells, applied to the surface.
The grooves determine where fabric sections meet. The maker has to choose a pattern, cut it and fit it to a three-dimensional form. On a small figure, the placement of a motif can change the appearance of an entire robe. The textile is doing more than covering a body; its edges help articulate it.
The company also preserves molds and technical knowledge left by the late doll maker Jiro Hasebe. Some traditional components are increasingly difficult to obtain as specialist suppliers decline. That gives the design decisions a practical limit: a new piece draws on materials and skills that may not be easily replaced.
A doll-making technique, without a doll
YUJINART’s interior projects show how far the method can travel. A groove can join fabrics on an abstract wall work as well as define the folds of a doll’s clothing. Artist Ken Yashiki has used the company’s Nishijin-ori textiles and kimekomi technique in wall pieces, making the relationship between sections of cloth the subject of the work.
The brand’s Oku Art series similarly considers works in relation to the spaces where they are placed. Cushions, wall pieces and other interior textiles give the archive a scale and function beyond dress. Against a relatively spare interior, a small area of densely patterned weave can carry the composition.
The same cloth can take a louder role
Other collaborations ask less restrained things of the material. A limited MA-1 flight jacket made with Jägermeister Japan puts the liqueur brand’s bold identity beside woven Japanese textile. Collaborations with BEAMS JAPAN bring the work into contemporary retail and accessories.
The textiles have also appeared in Dress Camp’s Spring/Summer 2015 presentation at Paris Fashion Week and Yumi Katsura’s 2016 Paris haute couture show. Work with artist Tomoko Sawada offers another setting. These projects do not arrive at one new look for Nishijin-ori. They demonstrate how differently the same material can be read when the collaborator and context change.
Learning changes the way you look
YUJINART also offers kimekomi workshops, continuing the teaching strand of the family business. Making a piece gives a visitor a specific problem to solve: where to place the fabric and how to fit it into the form. Those decisions are easy to miss in a finished doll.
For historical context, the Iwatsuki Doll Museum provides an introduction to the area’s doll-making culture. Workshop schedules, locations and reservations should be checked through YUJINART’s official website and Instagram before planning a visit.
A textile archive is often understood as a record of what has already been made. YUJINART keeps asking it to do further work. A doll, a jacket and a wall piece need different things from the cloth. Each choice makes one part of its possibilities visible—and uses a little of the material that made those possibilities available.
Sources: