Tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of Ichinomiya, a town in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, a living legend continues to devote his life to textile design and production. Taniguchi San is 83 years young. His textile studies began in high school, and have led him on a lifelong journey - a sixty year career designing and producing exquisite original fabrics.

In this notes post (where you'll find more notes, photos, and a video from our visit), you can see one of the multiple swatch libraries cataloguing his work over six decades. In one room I spent hours just to scratch the surface of his archive, reviewing each swatch - artifacts representing countless hours of research and development all in the name of turning ideas into reality.

Taniguchi San has developed fabrics for some of Japan's most renowned designers, in addition to devoting energy to his own inventions in cloth. Today he continues with the same vitality and passion I imagine has been fueling his work all these years. On the day we visited, he was excited to review some new kakishibu (fermented persimmon) yarn dye tests. His dedication and curiosity is infectious and inspiring.