In Japan, craft is a form of devotion — whether weaving a gold obi in Kyoto or mending a work coat with a hundred small stitches.
✨ Fun fact: The Japanese art of kintsugi repairs broken pottery with lacquer and gold, treating the crack not as damage to hide but as part of the object's history to honour.
Of all the world's textile cultures, Japan's feels like a cousin to ours — a place where silk woven with gold is treated with the same reverence we give a Banarasi.
Nishijin — the brocade of Kyoto
Japan's great brocade is Nishijin-ori, woven in the Nishijin district of Kyoto for centuries. Using silk and gold thread on intricate looms, its weavers create the sumptuous obi — the wide sash of the kimono — in patterns of cranes, pines and flowers. It is, in every sense, Japan's kamkhwab.
The dyer's arts — yuzen and shibori
Where the kimono is not woven into pattern, it is dyed into it. Yuzen is the art of painting fine, pictorial designs onto silk by hand. Shibori — Japan's exquisite tie-dye — binds, folds and stitches the cloth before dyeing, often in deep indigo.
The stitch that mends
Japan also turned mending into art. Sashiko — running-stitch embroidery in white thread on indigo cloth — was used to reinforce and repair work clothes. Worn-out cloth was even torn into strips and woven anew as sakiori. Nothing was wasted; everything was made to last.
The thread we love
The weavers of Nishijin and the weavers of Banaras have never met, yet they share a faith: that silk and gold, woven by hand, are worth a lifetime's skill. See it in our Brocade Fabric collection.
Frequently asked questions
What is Nishijin brocade?
Nishijin-ori is the traditional silk brocade of Kyoto, woven with gold and coloured silk into obi sashes and kimono fabric.
What is kintsugi?
The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and gold, so the mended cracks become a beautiful, honoured part of the object.
Sources & further reading
On Nishijin brocade, shibori and the sashiko-and-boro tradition of mending, see the collections and open-access records of the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing.
