This project began with a piece of cotton cloth and a simple screen printed checker pattern. I was immediately drawn to it - maybe the slightly irregular edges of the squares due to being screen printed by hand, or the nuance in shade across squares from the natural pigments used.

I kept coming back to this sample piece of cloth, using it as a coaster or to dry my hands. It was just pleasing to look at really. Inevitably this kind of interaction leads to 'could it be a shirt?', but in this case it felt a bit more graphic and bold than my typical preference. So the experimenting began to produce a low contrast version, with two colors closer in tone for a subtler pattern.

The idea was simple enough, but the execution was anything but - natural pigments dont just do whatever you demand. There are rules of alchemy at play. After an extended number of trials, we settled on first screenprinting the check pattern with a light brown gallnut pigment harvested from the Pagoda tree. Next the garments were cut and sewn before making there way to Amami Oshima for mud dyeing. With this combination, a very subdued check pattern of two dark shades of brown was achieved.

In these images, we get a glimpse into the one hundred year old screen-printing workshop in Kyoto that works exclusively with natural pigments.