Situated in the southern Kagoshima Prefecture are the Amami Islands where the ancient craft of Japanese mud-dyeing was first discovered and til this day; preserved. Locally found Sharinbai trees provide bark that is chipped and boiled for 10 hours to create a tannin-rich dye bath. A reddish pigment is transformed to grey and then brown through a reactive process of then dyeing with the island’s natural, iron-laden mud, known as dorotetsu. Back and forth, inside and outside, throughout the day the colour deepens and recognises with a hue only achievable in this place, in these conditions, with this historic knowledge.

Yukihito Kanai is an expressive artisan employing ancient skills to present new ideas. He leads the iconic mud works; Kanai Kougei, founded by his father, Kazuhiko Kanai. For our R18 commission, Mr Kanai’s personal artwork around colour transitions and gradations in natural dyes led to a series of shirts. The shirts are cut from a cotton-linen parachute cloth woven at Furuhashi Weaving in Shizuoka, sewn with a core-spun yarn that absorbs natural dyes, and finished with natural Corozo buttons.

Yellow to Brown — This garment is first dyed 5 times using the peel of dried mangosteen fruit before being mordanted with alum. It is then half-dipped in another mangosteen dye-bath 3 more times and mordanted with the iron-rich dorotetsu to create the middle khaki colour. Finally the bottom of the garment is dipped in a sharinbai stock and then dorotetsu 10 times to develop the dark brown.

Grey to Indigo — This garment is processed in two halves. The bottom is dyed with natural indigo 3 times while the top is dyed dark grey with dorotetsu 3 times.