Spring 2003

The Japanese word “shibori” covers a multitude of dye techniques. Wada’s preferred translation is “shaped resist dyeing,” which describes the process of creating pattern by manipulating a two-dimensional cloth surface into a three-dimensional shape before compressing it to dye. The fabric may undergo plucking, pinching, bunching, pleating, folding, wrapping, stitching, tying, clamping or a combination of these. The resulting pattern may be orderly or random. Some shibori techniques are centuries old; others are being invented by a new worldwide community of artists, many of them Wada’s students.

Davis, whom Wada classifies as one of a group of “master dyers” she has taught, was one of 20 artists she selected for a London trunk show that included work from Australia, Canada, Chile, India, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Much of the work Davis displayed at the show featured piecework and construction by Carol Freeman, with whom he collaborates on a line of kimonos, tunics, jackets and scarves.

The five-day trunk show included an invitation-only preview, a “sushi and shopping” evening and a closing reception. Artists talked to customers and, with equal enthusiasm, to one another. Most planned to go on to the fourth international shibori symposium in North Yorkshire when the trunk show ended.

There was time to be a tourist, too — climbing to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral to get a great view of London, walking across the new Millennium Bridge, even a day trip to the village of Downe to visit Charles Darwin’s home and drink a pint of “Old Speckled Hen” at the George & Dragon Pub.

But, for Davis, the most exciting event was a meeting with the owner of an exclusive shop in Knightsbridge, which resulted in the sale of almost all the inventory he had brought with him — and a new international outlet for his textile business, Shibori West.

After a week in London, Davis made his way to Harrogate, North Yorkshire to attend the symposium, which was planned to coincide with a huge annual knitting and stitchery show. (Symposia have also been held in Japan, India and Chile in 1992, 1997 and 1999, respectively.)

Harrogate is an old spa town. Its century-old Turkish baths remain a popular attraction, but the town’s economic mainstay nowadays is a gigantic conference center and the hundreds of upscale shops and restaurants surrounding it.

In late November, three enormous exhibit halls were filled to capacity with stitchery supply vendors, stitchery artists and gallery-style exhibitions from as far away as South Africa. Thousands of people, mostly female, had come to Harrogate for this annual show. Frail, blue-haired ladies clutching needlepoint hoops rubbed shoulders with magenta-haired students from nearby Leeds College of Art and Design. Alongside traditional needlecrafts were contemporary works that stretched the boundaries of “stitchery,” including quilts that employed plaster, paint, leather, beads, safety pins, wood screws, nylon netting and cheesecloth.

Mie Iwatsubo demonstrated how she combines shibori with felting and knitting to create her nature-inspired bags, scarves and hats. She said she knew that shibori was her calling from the moment she discovered it: “I was instantly engaged. I saw that I should do this, and I should tell everybody that shibori is beautiful.”

Davis experienced a similar epiphany in 1981, on the night before his first workshop with Yoshiko Wada (in Gatlinburg, TN). “It was dark when I arrived. I walked through a building where they had a shibori exhibit, and saw a small, framed piece of arashi shibori by Ana Lisa Hedstrom. I was knocked off my feet by the beauty and intricacy of this small piece of fabric. It was like snakeskin or mushroom gills or butterfly wings that wanted to take flight.”

Wada’s workshop confirmed that arashi shibori, in which fabric is wrapped around a pole before being tied and dyed, was what he wanted to do. “I came home and changed everything. As soon as I started doing arashi shibori,” he said, “we began getting into the better craft shows, and the wholesale business started growing.”

Davis and Laurie Gundersen, his wife and business partner for many years, converted a former goat shed into a textile studio with heat, skylights, hot and cold water, cutting table, double sink, stove, sewing machine and storage space. Gundersen developed garment patterns, and Davis built a machine to speed the wrapping process.

In 1992, one of his textured jackets was accepted into a prestigious biennial textile competition in Kyoto. Later the same year, with help from a West Virginia Commission on the Arts Professional Development grant, Davis returned to Japan, this time with Gundersen, to attend the first international shibori symposium. In 1994 they received a $2,500 fellowship from the Commission on the Arts. Although Davis and Gundersen no longer work to gether, both continue to explore shibori techniques.

There are many other shibori techniques, some very ancient. The earliest known examples of the art include silk found in 4th-century Chinese tombs and pre-Columbian shibori alpaca in Peru. Shibori traditions have existed for centuries in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent as well as in Asia. Active production continues in western Africa, in southern China and in the western regions of India. Northern Africa, the Middle East, Indonesia and the Himalayan region are also active to a lesser degree. In the past 25 years, Western interest in shibori has mushroomed.

Materials and methods found in different traditions vary widely. Furthermore, an artist may dye a piece of cloth repeatedly, using a different shaping method each time. There really are no limits to the creative possibilities of shibori.