The photo above shows the central living area of a rural farmhouse on the border of Tochigi and Ibaraki prefectures. The house was restored by Kenji Tsuchisawa who bought it as a rundown heap when he was only 20, after seeing a photograph of a traditional Japanese farmhouse on a Tokyo magazine cover. He bought the house before realizing it was situated just one village away from the house in the magazine. Many Japanese traditional farmhouses have now been restored and modernized, but the layout of these houses is so clever in terms of use of space and comfort that when they are updated, the original layout is often retained. It’s a house model being studied by North American and European architects aiming to produce smaller but more functional houses. Traditional Japanese houses are not large, but they seem larger than they are thanks to their well-thought-out layout, and their serene, warm version of minimalism makes them comfortable and functional. The use of natural materials and repeated colours makes the rooms feel balanced, and so does the fact that most objects have a real function. Decorative elements exist, but not to excess. When they are modernized, the main alteration is usually the replacement of the original exterior doors and windows, and trading the sliding shoji screen doors and windows for more sturdily framed glass doors, windows and skylights to let in more light and keep out the weather.

Both photos above show the traditional indoor fire pit known as an irori, which sometimes sits on a raised seating platform, though in the photo above the irori has been traded for a more efficient (and safer) wood stove. The beautiful half-frosting on the glass screen doors in the photo above provides some privacy from the fairly public courtyard for people seated inside. Photos are from a book I think is really worth buying: Japan Country Living: Spirit, Tradition, Style, by Amy Sylvester Katoh, photographs by Shin Kimura, Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan, 1993. Kimura’s work has also appeared in Met Home and Paris Vogue.

Above is a checkerboard textile of indigo-dyed hemp by Hiroyuki Shindo, on the verandah of his thatched house. It provides privacy (it appears opaque from outside, see here) and yet admits light and the view. Below, a functional modern kitchen produced by making only minor changes to the original.

It would be a cliche but probably also true to say weaving is an endangered or at least increasingly uncommon art, so I’m always excited when I see being done, especially locally. Diane Thorp is a weaver from Vancouver Island whose work has been widely exhibited and has been featured in Fiberarts Magazine and other places. We really like the subtlety of her work. Among many other things Diane makes custom “transparencies” or weavings for windows as well as for hanging room dividers. The pieces are aesthetically pleasing while also functioning as window coverings – they provide a degree of privacy (or block ugly views), are nearly transparent during the day (this is very hard to photograph!) and then are more pleasingly opaque at night. Diane works entirely with natural fibres and these transparencies are woven with linen. They are so loosely woven that they seem fragile, but they’re not.

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These textile shop banners are common in Japan. Given how easy they are to install and how much more beautiful they are than typical signage, it seems strange that they haven’t been widely copied. They can easily be adapted for interior decor, too, not just exterior purposes. These two examples are from restaurants - the yellow one is in Matsumoto City and the blue is from a specialty eel restaurant in Tokyo’s Asakusa district. Their bottom corners are held down either with iron weights or simple hooks screwed into the sidewalk. The banners have the dual function of advertising the shop or restaurant as well as hiding bland areas of architecture or unsightly objects – here the blue fabric panel also serves to hide empty beer crates awaiting pickup. These could so easily be rigged up at home, for many purposes – as room dividers for interiors, or as space dividers outside for carports, patios or yards. Even plain or printed outdoor canvas would work, and the panels could just as easily be hung vertically – they don’t have to be pitched at an angle. We’re in the process of producing similar room dividers from vintage and sustainable textiles using this method, for those who don’t want to DIY.