My time at Kawashima Textile School was much more than a lesson in weaving. I truly felt like it was a lesson in life. There were times when I actually swore out loud at my loom, having spent an hour happily weaving away and then noticing a mistake which meant I had to undo it all and start again. This was a regular occurrence throughout the day, and one morning I made about 1cm progress. There was a point when I was questioning whether it was really a good use of my time and I got really frustrated. I struggled to fathom how a ‘creative pursuit’ could be so prescriptive, with everything being black and white – you were either doing it right or you were doing it wrong. This is a whole world away from the teaching style of all the artists and designers I work with in Do What You Love, and I found it really tough.
But eventually I realised that sometimes we have to take instruction and learn the basics strictly and carefully in order to build the foundations for freedom of creativity later. If you don’t know how to weave evenly, how are you ever going to design and create a beautiful kimono? We need to know the rules in order to break the rules. It is so obvious, but it took a lot of huffing and puffing for me to realise this in the context of weaving.
I am not the world’s most patient person – I like to be doing stuff. But Kawashima was so good for me in that it made me slow down and take care with each detail. When I got into the rhythm of it I was almost in a trance – which opened up my mind for dreaming of other things.
The vocabulary was also a whole new world for me. I had never heard of ‘sericin’, ‘tussah’, ‘throstle yarn’, ‘dobby cloth’ or ‘heddles’ in English, never mind in Japanese. The 16-page (very helpful) vocab list made me feel like I was back at university! It was a great opportunity to learn lots of specialist textile terms, with the gentle support of my lovely bilingual teacher Emma Omote.
Some important lessons in weaving and life…
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More posts from school here: Preparing and dyeing the thread / Preparing giant bobbins / Preparing the warp
