Japan
Hello, I'm Yuki
Tanaka
Shibori is my discipline — seven years of study under a master dyer in Kyoto’s Nishijin district. Silk is not incidental to shibori. It is the reason shibori exists.
Yuki Tanaka is a Kyoto-based artist trained in the traditional Japanese dyeing technique of shibori — a resist-dyeing method that creates patterns through folding, twisting, and binding silk before submersion in natural indigo dye baths. She trained for seven years under master dyer Hiroshi Murata in the Nishijin district. Her designs carry the quietude of a Zen garden.
In Kyoto, we say that shibori is a conversation between the dyer and the fabric. You fold, you clamp, you submerge. The silk decides where the indigo enters and where it does not. You propose. The silk responds. Kelaghayi is the opposite. The galib is a declaration. The paraffin says: the dye will not enter here, this is the boundary, this is the form. The silk has no choice. The master has all the choice. I spent a long time thinking about whether these two philosophies could exist on the same piece of fabric. Then I stopped thinking and ordered a large sweet potato from the supermarket. I carved the Astuvansalmi elk — the Finnish rock painting shape that Aino showed me in a photograph — into the potato. I pressed it into a piece of Shaki silk sample with red iron-oxide pigment. Then I folded the same fabric in itajime shibori and dipped it in natural indigo. The elk appeared through the indigo in white and resist-blue. The declaration and the conversation at the same time. I called Aino immediately. She cried a little. So did I.
— Yuki Tanaka, Kyoto, Japan
The motif
Itajime shibori — fold and clamp resist
Kyoto, Japan · shibori · indigo dye
Dyed by hand in Shaki, Azerbaijan
Collections by Yuki Tanaka
The Shibori Collection
Shibori indigo resist-dyeing · 10 pieces
10 pieces
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