Small-scale making, natural materials, and cloth meant to stay in use for a long time.
What yamamayu seeks is a form of textile practice that continues between nature and the human hand.
To make cloth is not only to use materials, but also to consider what remains after use, and what may be carried into the next generation.
For us, sustainability is not a separate topic. It is a way of working each day.
Five Ways yamamayu Practices Sustainability
Circularity
The making of cloth at yamamayu takes place within a cycle where mulberry, plants, silkworms, and daily life meet one another.
Plants used in dyeing and silkworm pupae are returned to compost, and from there to the soil that supports the next life.
What is created in the process is not treated as waste and forgotten.
Returning what came from nature back to nature is also part of making cloth.
Reuse
In weaving, leftover yarn and small fragments inevitably appear.
At yamamayu, they are not left behind as something wasted. They are tied, joined, and carried into new forms of expression.
Short lengths of thread and irregular fragments still hold their own character.
Using them fully is not only about frugality, but about listening to the material to the end.
Keeping Tools in Use
In the studio, treadle looms that use almost no electricity, along with old power looms, are repaired and kept in use.
To keep tools working over time and pass them on to the future is also part of a circular practice.
Old tools hold a sense of time that cannot be measured by efficiency alone.
Maintaining them means preserving not only technique, but also the physical feeling of making cloth.
Staying Connected to the Community
yamamayu values activities rooted in the local community.
Through natural learning with children, and work involving senior makers spinning mawata silk, the culture of textile making is carried into the future.
Cloth does not exist only inside the studio. It continues because it is held by the memory of a place and the hands of many people.
Making together is also one form of sustainability.
Using Cloth for a Long Time
Cloth grows in character through use.
We ask that it be cared for gently — hand-washed with mild detergent, dried in the shade, and stored away from strong light — so that it may remain in use for many years.
Rather than being quickly replaced, cloth can gather time with proper care.
We hope for textiles whose changes themselves become part of their beauty.
Materials and Process
We work mainly with natural fibers such as cotton, silk, and tensan silk, and choose plant dyes as well as lower-impact chemical dyes with care.
Indigo fermented with lye, plant dyeing, and weaving are approached with respect for traditional methods, while also keeping reproducibility and safety in mind.
Sustainability is not only about preserving old methods exactly as they were, but also about shaping them so they can continue in present life.
Collection and Re-Dyeing
To help cloth remain in use longer, we are gradually building a way to receive back well-used pieces and dye them again.
We hope they may take on a new color and return once more to daily life.
To make cloth and let it end there is not enough.
To place our hands on time-worn cloth again and carry it into its next life is also part of yamamayu’s practice.
yamamayu hopes to carry cloth into the future not as something finished at the moment of making, but as something that continues to grow with nature and remain in use over time.
Continue Reading
After learning about this circular way of making cloth, you may continue into the studio, the journal, and the works that grow from it.
山まゆの里染織工房 