Tien Chiu

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December 10, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Tsujigahana kimono

I’m a big fan of Itchiku Kubota, who made fabulous kimono in the tsujigahana style. Tsujigahana combines shibori (tied-resist) dyeing with hand-painted motifs, usually flowers. Kubota took this method to jaw-dropping heights – so much so that his work is my personal inspiration. If I can make something as beautiful as his “Symphony of Light” kimono, I’ll consider my life a success. (I wrote a blog post about Kubota a few years back, if you want to know more.)

Though Kubota’s work is out of my price range, I’ve been looking for a piece in the tsujigahana style for awhile. It’s complicated, because in Japan, “tsujigahana” also describes a design style rather than a specific method – which means there are many imitations using other methods (woven, embroidery, printed) and the imitations can be quite good. John Marshall has been helping me sort the real from the fake.

Last week I finally came across a kimono that John and I both thought was real, and where I liked the overall design. So I bought it online, and spent the next week biting my nails waiting for its arrival. The package finally arrived yesterday, and I tore it open, to find that it was even more beautiful than the online photos! And it is definitely genuine.

So I spread it out for photos, and naturally the first thing that happened was this:

Cat on kimono
Tigress “helping”

After gently shooing away my beautiful kitty, I tried taking photos of the full kimono. I couldn’t do it justice with my cell phone, but here’s my best effort:

tsujigahana kimono - full view
tsujigahana kimono – full view

And here are some closeups:

closeup of tsujigahana kimono
closeup of tsujigahana kimono
tsujigahana kimono sleeve
kimono sleeve

You might wonder how the makers handle seams – how do you get the two pieces to harmonize perfectly across the seam, like this?

precisely aligned seam on tsujigahana kimono
precisely aligned seam on kimono

In some cases the answer is to dye the garment (seams and all) after sewing, which is what I suspect happened on this seam because of how perfectly the shibori pattern lines up. However, there are also cases where the pieces are dyed separately, with a little extra on either side. This can result in imperfect overlap, like so:

tsujigahana kimono closeup
seam showing not-quite overlapped designs

Around then, help reappeared, and I gave up on taking more photos, since it was obviously time to pet the cat:

tsujigahana kimono, with cat
tsujigahana kimono, with cat

I’m very pleased to have the kimono! I’ve been thinking about what to do with it. I haven’t got room to display the whole piece at home (not to mention what the feline assistants would do to it), so I’m thinking I might remove one sleeve and pin it up in my cubicle. It’s not nearly as nice as seeing the whole thing, but at least this way I’ll be able to see it daily.

Meanwhile, some other wonderful packages have arrived. This lovely 4-quart All-Clad saucepan came a day or two ago, a gift from my in-laws:

4-quart All-Clad saucepan
4-quart All-Clad saucepan

Of course I had to try it out immediately, so this morning I inaugurated it with the beginnings of some yuzu marmalade:

inaugural yuzu marmalade
inaugural yuzu marmalade

My other package will come in handy for the marmalade. Here is my Christmas gift to myself:

Mauviel hammered copper preserving pan
Mauviel hammered copper preserving pan

It’s a solid copper preserving pan – designed for making jams and jellies (and marmalades!). Copper conducts heat efficiently and evenly, and the sloping-outward sides encourage quick evaporation. It’s a large pot – 10″ at the base and almost 16″ at the top – which also makes for quick evaporation of excess liquid.

It’s also beautiful, especially from the outside, as it is hammered copper – which you can see a bit on the inside but is much more prominent outside. I’ll take another photo tomorrow, when I take it down to finish cooking the marmalade.

I’m actually making two batches of marmalade tomorrow, using the same amounts of liquid and chopped yuzu for each. One batch will be boiled in a conventional stockpot, one in the copper preserving pan. I’m curious just how much faster the marmalade cooks up in the preserving pan. I hope it makes a big difference – the faster the excess water boils off, the better the flavor, as lengthy cooking destroys flavor.

All these packages arriving mean lots of empty boxes and packing material, of course, which makes somebody very happy:

Fritz exploring a box
Fritz exploring a box

Not only does he love chewing on cardboard boxes (all of ours are a bit ragged around the edges 🙂 ), he enjoys playing and pouncing in the paper packing material. The Christmas season is wonderful for cats!

Filed Under: All blog posts, food, textiles, surface design

October 23, 2014 by Tien Chiu

The opening shot of chocolate season

112 pounds of chocolate and 20 pounds of cocoa
112 pounds of chocolate and 20 pounds of cocoa

…and could you ask for a better shot? Here are fifty-one kilograms (about a hundred and twelve pounds) of Valrhona white, milk, and dark chocolates, and another nine kilograms (about twenty pounds) of Valrhona cocoa. No girl could possibly ask for anything more.

This weekend I am starting my flavor trials. Here are the top few flavors on my list:

  • Kaffir lime, lemongrass, ginger, coconut milk caramels in dark chocolate
  • pear, sage, and honey fruit jelly, with sage-honey ganache (not sure dark, white, or milk), dipped in chocolate
  • Chocolate pistachio fudge
  • Pistachio ganache with kirsch
  • Pistachio/white chocolate gianduja and dark chocolate ganache
  • Walnut gianduja with cinnamon milk chocolate ganache

A couple of those flavor combinations come from my FAAAAAABULOUS new chocolate book:

Fine Chocolates 4 by Jean-Pierre Wybauw
Fine Chocolates 4 by Jean-Pierre Wybauw

Jean-Pierre Wybauw is one of the foremost experts on chocolatiering, and this is his fourth book. Each of his books is a wonderful combination of theory and practice: it starts by explaining the theory of how everything works and then provides a mouthwatering set of recipes. The first three books in the series plus Peter Greweling’s Chocolates and Confections are my chocolatiering bibles. And now – just in time for chocolate season – a new one!

I haven’t yet had time to devour the book completely, but I did page through the enticing food porn, I mean chocolate recipes, and pull out some interesting flavor combinations. Some of them, like peach fruit jelly and vanilla ganache, are classics that I just hadn’t thought to try yet; others, like raspberry-coriander, sound really intriguing; and others, like caraway-lavender, I can’t visualize at all. Which means I really have to try them!

I have also just finished writing up five pages detailing the things I learned about katazome while studying with John Marshall. I wanted to write down absolutely everything I could remember before I forgot it all – and, while I’m writing it, why not share it with the world? So, with John’s permission, I wrote four pages covering carving stencils, making katazome paste, stenciling the paste, and applying pigments + soy milk. There is also a fifth page that provides links to the first four.

This was no small task – those five pages are over four thousand words, plus photos and video! But I thought it was important to capture what I learned. I’m strongly drawn to katazome, and will likely return to it at some point, integrating it with my weaving somehow.

Here’s a pic of a katazome tiger that John did as a demo during class, and which I rinsed out yesterday – gorgeous!

Finished katazome tiger
Finished katazome tiger

Meanwhile, the book was on temporary hold while I wrote up the katazome stuff, but I’m back on it now. I’ve written the first seven hundred fifty words of my first prototype chapter, so I’m about a quarter done. Hoping to make more progress in the next several mornings, now that the katazome dissertation is complete!

Finally, we have made a shocking discovery: Fritz has become a hardened criminal! It all started with Mike’s socks. They were migrating. We’d come home and find a scattering of socks all over the house. Since Mike wasn’t doing it, and I wasn’t doing it, that left only two possibilities. Naturally, Fritz came under suspicion, given his previous history of drug abuse (you may recall that he loves sniffing shoes), but as Tigress also is quite playful, we weren’t quite sure. Until this morning. Mike woke up around seven o’clock to the sound of a cat pawing at something. He opened his eyes, and there was Fritz, digging in Mike’s clean laundry basket! Eventually Fritz found a sock, and made off with it. Mystery solved!

(But I knew deep down inside that all this shoe-sniffing would lead to a life of crime…we should have sent him off to rehab while there was still time!)

Here are a few photos of the culprit in action. Unfortunately, I was laughing way too hard to take a video…

Fritz digging for socks
Fritz digging for socks
Fritz finds a sock!
Fritz finds a sock!
Fritz stealing a sock
Fritz stealing a sock

Filed Under: All blog posts, food, chocolate, textiles, surface design Tagged With: katazome

October 18, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Japanese textile treasures

Pardon the radio silence since my last post! Sunday and Monday I was at John Marshall’s, Tuesday I spent recovering and doing laundry, and from Wednesday on I’ve been alternately buried in work stuff and book stuff. Both are in exciting phases. At work, my new project is still in the definition phase. Can’t give details, but it’s HUGE – over half the people at Skybox will be working on it over the next year and a half, and it touches literally everything Skybox has been doing up until now. And since I am the project manager for said enormous project, I have been scrambling the last week or two – both to come up to speed myself and to outline the project scope/schedule/roles and responsibilities for everyone else. Fortunately, I have help at all levels, but it’s still a pretty formidable challenge. Which is okay; I like challenges!

In parallel with taming the new-project chaos at work, I’ve been working on reducing the book chaos. I’ve now annotated the transcripts for eleven interviews and imported all the annotations in to Docear (the software I’m using to manage my references). I added tags to each topic, then filtered on those tags to get all the quotes specifically related to my first prototype chapter, which will be about getting started on a project. I put those quotes into my mindmap/outline of the chapter. I plan to write the rough draft of the chapter tomorrow.

I’m also in the process of identifying artists for each chapter. My tentative plan is to feature 1-2 artists in each chapter, sharing their thoughts on the material in the chapter. Some artists’ thoughts fit better in one chapter than another, of course, so I have been working on figuring out the best pairing of artists to chapters. That will also help me identify areas where I need more material, which in turn will shape my interview questions for the next set of interviewees.

In between that, I have two other projects I want to complete this weekend. The first is simple and prosaic – making a batch of soap. Mike and I like to make our own soap, mostly because we think it’s better than store-bought soap. I use a blend of coconut and palm oils, and the resulting soap lathers up nicely and doesn’t get soft and mushy. I just bought a bunch of fragrance oils and can’t wait to try them in soap.

The second project is much more ambitious – documenting everything I learned about katazome in three packed days at John Marshall’s studio. John gave us a wealth of information – not just what to do, but why to do it and how to improvise if necessary – and I need to write it all down before I forget it all. And I figure, while I’m at it, I might as well put it up on the website. So (with John’s permission) I’ve been working on a set of pages about katazome, which I’m hoping to publish tomorrow or Monday. Stay tuned!

One of the treats of visiting John’s studio was getting to see some of his textile treasures. Here are some of the photos I took – which, alas, show only a small fraction of the beautiful textiles he showed us!

cloth woven with 24 karat gold
cloth woven with 24 karat gold
katazome piece, showing the exquisite detail in the stencil (finger demonstrating scale)
katazome piece, showing the exquisite detail in the hand-carved stencil – this is NOT printed cloth! Instead, paste resist was stenciled on and dye then applied. (Finger in photo to give a sense of scale.)
fabric depicting dyers at work
fabric depicting dyers at work
This is not a block print. It is entirely hand-painted!
This is not a block print. It is entirely hand-painted!
A banner woven from lacquered paper
A banner woven from lacquered paper
Close-up of banner
Close-up of banner. It looks almost solid gold!
Reverse of banner. There is no gold on this side because you are seeing the back of the paper strips, which were not gold-leafed!
Reverse of banner. There is no gold on this side because you are seeing the back of the paper strips, which were not gold-leafed!
an exquisite piece of embroidery. Th woman's hair is left free at the ends!
an exquisite piece of embroidery. The woman’s hair is left free at the ends!
An outfit worn by Mori Arinori, first Japanese ambassador to the United States
An outfit worn by Mori Arinori, first Japanese ambassador to the United States
Two pigment-dyed fabrics. The bottom one is nearly new and shows harsh coloring using rust pigments. The top has been washed multiple times, washing away the dark rust areas and leaving a much softer, more appealing look.
Two pigment-dyed fabrics. The bottom one is nearly new and shows harsh coloring using rust pigments. The top has been washed multiple times, washing away the dark rust areas and leaving a much softer, more appealing look.
A wonderful piece featuring both cut and uncut velvet as well as a variety of weave structures.
A wonderful piece featuring both cut and uncut velvet as well as a variety of weave structures.
A tsujigahana piece - which combines shibori, painted pigments, and dyework.
A tsujigahana piece – a technique which combines shibori, hand-painting, and dyework.
Close-up of tsujigahana piece, showing the delicate detail of the brush strokes.
Close-up of tsujigahana piece, showing the delicate detail of the brush strokes.
Close-up of tsujigahana piece. Notice that you can see the stitch holes from the shibori!
Close-up of tsujigahana piece. Notice that you can see the stitch holes from the shibori!

And, finally, for those patient enough to read this far, a feline treat: Fritz demonstrating (to Tigress) the proper use of a laundry basket! (And notice how deftly Tigress avoids his surprise attack, leaping gracefully to the cat tree.)

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, surface design, writing Tagged With: book

October 12, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Dyeing with fresh indigo

I’m up in Covelo, where the three of us are studying katazome with John Marshall. But we’ve been doing a lot more than that! Since the katazome paste needs to cook for quite awhile, we spent a good chunk of yesterday playing with fresh indigo leaves from John’s back yard. (Luxury!)

Here is a photo of the indigo:

indigo growing in John Marshall's garden
indigo growing in John Marshall’s garden

We helped John pick the indigo, two or three leaves from every plant, looking for the bluer leaves. Here are some of the picked indigo leaves:

indigo leaves
indigo leaves

Since we were going to dye some skeins of yarn, we presoaked the yarn in hot water with a bit of detergent, then started grinding the indigo leaves. Very cold water (John stores gallons and gallons in the refrigerator) and indigo leaves in a blender:

grinding the fresh indigo
grinding the fresh indigo

Then John strained the ground-up mixture through some fine-mesh fabric, into the dyebath bucket. Here’s the resulting dyebath:

fresh indigo - dye bath
fresh indigo – dye bath

Next we entered the wetted out skeins of silk:

skeins in fresh indigo dyebath
skeins in fresh indigo dyebath

You can see the ice floating in the water – this dyebath works best when very, very cold. The skeins are placed around a wooden dowel and rotated more or less continuously to ensure even dyeing all the way around the skein.

(No pix of the skeins yet: they weren’t quite dry when we left for the day, so photos will come tomorrow.)

After grinding and straining the fresh indigo, there was some coarse stuff left over. Not to waste an opportunity, John showed us how to apply ground-up fresh indigo to a piece of cloth. He put down plastic stencils on some silk cloth (sorry, I know they’re barely visible):

plastic stencils on cloth, for use with fresh indigo
plastic stencils on cloth, for use with fresh indigo

Next he put on the indigo-leaf paste, pressing it down with a wooden rolling pin to make sure it came well into contact with the cloth:

applying ground-up indigo to cloth, over plastic stencils
applying ground-up indigo to cloth, over plastic stencils

We left it there for the rest of the day. At the end of the day, we removed the ground-up indigo and rinsed out the cloth:

fresh indigo - stenciled, finished
fresh indigo – stenciled, finished

Of course this was just a quick sample, but the method definitely has promise, if only to use up leftovers. Note the interesting texture from the coarsely ground indigo!

There is also a definite green tinge to the finished cloth. John explained that fresh indigo used this way produces a distinctly turquoise color, as opposed to the navy/slightly greyish blue from a conventional indigo vat.

Next we did rubbings with fresh indigo leaves. John had a collection of carved wooden stamps to make rubbings with, but I fell in love with this Indonesian copper tjap:

Indonesian copper tjap
Indonesian copper tjap

These are actually meant for batik, but I think they’re beautiful in their own right. I actually own a few, even though I’ve never really figured out how to use them with wax on cloth. I get blurry images, very frustrating. But they’re so beautiful that I occasionally buy more.

Anyway, I loved the pattern, so I stretched some silk in an embroidery hoop (as John advised) and rubbed across the tjap with a wad of fresh indigo leaves:

rubbing done with fresh indigo
rubbing done with fresh indigo

Then we dipped them in the fresh indigo vat to add a little color to the background. I don’t have a photo of my finished piece yet – I decided I wanted a mottled look, so I scrunched up the silk a la low-water immersion dyeing, bound it tightly, and dumped it into the dyebath. At the end of the day it still looked a little pale to me, so I left it in the dyebath overnight. Pictures tomorrow!

Of course, I won’t have access to fresh indigo unless I grow my own, but it was still fascinating to see it in action, since the traditional indigo vat is much more common. John does traditional indigo as well, drying the indigo for later use:

dried indigo
dried indigo

And here’s an entire  bin of  dried indigo leaves!

bin of dried indigo leaves
bin of dried indigo leaves

Finally, John showed us some gorgeous samples of silk dyed with fresh indigo:

fresh indigo samples - fabric
fresh indigo samples – fabric

And here are some yarns dyed with various indigo processes (traditional vat, thiourea dioxide vat, fresh indigo). The only one that isn’t pure indigo is the forest green one in lower right, which was dyed over onion skins:

indigo samples - yarns
indigo samples – yarns

I thought it was fascinating to see all the colors of indigo! I had always associated it with, well, indigo blue, but there was a much wider assortment of colors that I had expected.

In katazome-land, we also made katazome paste – three kinds: traditional rice paste + finely ground defatted rice bran, pure rice paste, and rice paste with coarsely ground rice bran of the sort you could find in a health food store. John explained to us that the last seller of the traditionally used rice bran had closed shop and retired, and no alternative was available yet. (Yikes!) Thus the experiments with alternatives.

We have now selected our fabrics for pasting up – I chose a textured silk crepe. From my experience with screen printing, I was a bit worried that the texture would interfere with applying the paste and the dyes, but John explained that the stenciling process produced a thicker layer, so it wouldn’t interfere even with fine lines.

We’ve also chosen stencils – no small task with John’s amazing array of 3000+ stencils! I picked a complex repeating pattern (which, unfortunately, I didn’t think to photograph) because I wanted to learn how to do repeats. John advised me not to try for too many repeats, because I wanted to play with painting on pigments, which is a much slower process than the indigo vat Alfred and Carrie planned to use. So I will be doing three repeats of just that one stencil.

I would love to try the same stencil on different textures of fabric and also on non-silk fibers, but there won’t be time for that, so I figure I can do that at home. I could have done three different stencils, which would have been lovely (John carves the most amazing stencils!), but I figured learning how to stencil repeats was much more important than having three pretty stencil patterns to take home. (My general attitude towards classes is that I’m here to learn, not to bring home something pretty. Hence the choice of a repeating stencil over getting three different pieces.)

It’s almost breakfast time, so I’ll break here – more tomorrow!

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing, surface design Tagged With: katazome

October 5, 2014 by Tien Chiu

Starting the first draft

I’ve now conducted ten interviews, and have seven transcripts back for review. That is a good chunk of material. So I am taking a day or two to figure out how the material I have so far fits into the existing chapter outline. I am also drafting a prototype chapter, testing ways to integrate the interview material into what I’m writing. It’s a complex and mentally laborious process, full of questions. The chapters are currently written in narrative style – me talking to the reader. What will happen to the style and tone if I introduce more voices? Do I want that? Will I have to rewrite all the chapters if I do? What if….and the list goes on.

This is a complex problem, so I’m dealing with it the same way I deal with most complex problems: think it through while doing something mindless with my hands. In this particular case, I spent an hour making French onion soup, slowly stirring a pot full of onions as they caramelized on the stove. I put the outline of the chapter on the unlit burner next to the pot with the onions, stirring it with my brain as my hands stirred the onions. At the end of the hour, I had worked out most of the questions and their cascading impacts. (And I had tasty onion soup!)

So now I’m starting to write the prototype chapter, and outline the rest of the book. The two  together are quite a job, and I expect it to take me a few days. It’s brain-intensive work, so I’m working on it in the mornings, when I have better focus.

I’m also prepping for more interviews, as I have one scheduled for tomorrow and two more on Tuesday. After that I will take a few days off from interviewing, as I focus on finishing the draft chapter. I plan to pick up interviewing again on October 15.

Meanwhile, I have a little vacation planned. Two friends and I are going to Covelo, California next week for a three-day private class with John Marshall! We’ll primarily be studying katazome, with maybe a little indigo thrown in. We’re leaving this coming Friday and returning Monday night. I’m really excited. I took a two-day katazome workshop with Karen Miller last year, and think the techniques have all sorts of interesting possibilities, especially when combined with handwoven fabric. And John’s work is simply beautiful. Here (with permission) are photos of one of his pieces, taken when I was visiting last year:

"St. George and the Dragon" - front view
“St. George and the Dragon” – front view
"St. George and the Dragon" - back view
“St. George and the Dragon” – back view

I particularly love John’s sense of color – his colors blend and harmonize beautifully. I’m looking forward to studying with him!

On the weaving front, I have been sneaking out to resley the shadow weave warp every couple hours, when I need a break from writing. So I’m making good progress:

half resleyed shadow weave warp
half resleyed shadow weave warp

I’ve sleyed twenty-four inches, and have sixteen inches to go. That is about two more hours of work, so I’m guessing I will finish tonight or tomorrow. (Rome wasn’t built in a day, either!)

And what, pray tell, are the cats doing? As I type, they are chasing each other around the house like crazy. They’re quite the pair. Here they are, teaming up on a hapless piece of string:

 

Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing, surface design, weaving, writing Tagged With: book

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