This is a Japanese tradition we desperately need to adopt in North America – re-using textiles to wrap presents. It’s an art form, but it’s worth learning because it dispenses with all the annoying and wasteful tape and paper and ribbon, it’s a fun skill to learn (for kids too), and it’s an educational conversation piece – you might have to explain to the recipient what it is, but that’s probably worthwhile. Christmas is a forest disaster when you combine its Christmas trees and its paper usage. Any textile will work – just use some old fabric, recycle some scarves, or buy scarves/shawls from thrift and then watch some furoshiki tying videos. Any size of cloth will do – for the larger bags/wrapping you should look for the 40″ size of scarf shawl. In Japan, furoshiki were traditionally used as practical carrying bags as well as ceremonial wrapping. For the more utilitarian uses, people would carry a furoshiki cloth around with them, just in case, and tie it into a tote bag as the need arose. This habit will become very useful here once plastic bags are banned, and that’s soon (see the videos below to see how to tie a quick tote bag). Last year’s post on this topic is here and instructional furoshiki videos are here and here. Video directly below is great – Mick Jagger bought a furoshiki at this shop – but I hate the part where they walk away from the furoshiki shop with their purchases in glossy cardboard envelopes and paper bags! Photos here are all Creative Commons licensed on Flickr, by kirainet and vaneea.

And advanced:

This Japanese boro (futon cover) was made in the 19th century by recycling remnants of indigo dyed cotton and joining them together. It’s so well-made that it’s still in perfect condition. There is really no printed or woven substitute for this kind of work, which at this point in history, when handmade textile methods are rapidly vanishing, is really hard not to fetishize. People don’t seem to have time for mending anymore. On average North Americans throw away  a staggering 68 pounds of textiles a year each, which in Canada alone, with a population of approx 30 million people, amounts to 2,040,000,000 pounds. Yes, that’s 2 billion 40 million pounds of discarded textiles – in one year. And each year, we buy another 68 pounds. Textiles are some of the most toxic products to produce, and most of them travel great, wasteful distances to reach us. Some discarded textiles do get recycled – usually overseas in Asia, India and sometimes Africa, which means they take yet another trip. We might as well start mending again. Look how beautiful it is. Photos of this many-times-mended boro via 1st Dibs. Close-up detail:

The photos of Japanese mending and patches, below, are from Amy Sylvester Katoh’s book Japanese Country Living. She comments that “[t]he miraculous thing is that so many such pieces are extant today, carefully stored away for decades by the families that made and used them.” More photos and pages from the book can be found in the Japan Flickr set here. Immediately below: patched futon on beds and ragweave rug in a restored Japanese farmhouse; patched farmer’s jacket.

Below is the method of mending stitchery known as sashiko. It’s a form of mending which, by traveling across the warp or weft or often both, reinforces the textile and mimics weaving.

I’m not sure why I bought this last week, considering how much I dislike flags, flag waving, or any other patriotic or nationalist behaviours, or sentiments, or merch, but it was somehow appealing when I saw it in the fabric rack at VV. Probably because it was crumpled, faded, orphaned, abjectly inexpensive, and weirdly, touchingly orange. Also, since it dates from the 1970s, it has all these beautiful old elements – a high quality braided rope, a nice hem, and a real wooden toggle. It’s Canada Day today, and I’m posting this photo not out of nationalism but in memory of the spirit of outward-looking, border-ignoring internationalism that Canada briefly tried for in the 1970s, right around the time this flag was made. Maybe once we are rid of our current narrow-minded, inward-looking government, we can try for that again. Happy July 1st worldwide to everyone, and may things be nice wherever you are. Sorry about Celine Dion.

Linda and John Meyers of Wary Meyers Decorative Arts assemble these mod, chic, distinctly 1960s and 70s interiors almost entirely from furniture and objects they find in thrift and vintage sales. They’ve produced some great interior design projects for clients but shown here is their own house in Portland, Maine, which is by now quite well-known. I’m showing it rather than their other excellent projects because here they’re free to be the wildest and the most purely 60s. Their entertaining new blog documents their peripatetic treasure-hunt in what amounts to a decor road movie (photos at bottom are from the blog). There’s something really unerring about their  creative re-use and re-work of the past, their re-introduction of the 60s with its emphasis on pleasure and experience and its occasional psychedelia, and just generally their sense of adventure and adept historical juxtaposition. Much of their material is actually early modernist to midcentury modernist but the ultimate effect is the specific risk-taking quality of the post-50s era. I wish there were more members of this particular design army but it’s gratifying to see that their work is getting plenty of recognition. See the article in the NYT (or click below to read the text). 

Below, from the blog: 

Still life with Dansk salt and pepper shakers.

Above, “Linda walking toward disappointment.” Below, their post says “This worn old Le Corbusier Basculant chair was at a middle school’s sale on Saturday amidst piles of shin guards and Harry Potter books.” Further below, Gerald Thurston lamp. Photo at bottom is just captioned “dreamhouse.”

Lastly, “Waffles grabbed a bee.”

(more…)

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.

This is our friend Jonathan’s 100% lambswool, infallible laptop sleeve. If you don’t feel you can carry off the sleeves, then here’s an excellent upcycled armless laptop sweater you can easily make yourself, but it should be called a sleeveless.

and then there’s this.