Sunday 12 July 2009

Shibori

Here's something different from Busyman and S!X and Melbourne's State of Design Festival. My contribution to the "Sculpted Packages - Reshaped" exhibition on show at Von Haus next week: Upstairs 1A Crossley Street Melbourne, across the lane way from Pelegrini's near the top end of Bourke Street.

Shibori is range of traditional Japanese resist dyeing techniques that work through compressing the material to prevent the dye permeating beyond the surface. Methods include folding, clamping, tieing, bunching, stitching and capping. Applying shibori to leather is a whole new ballgame when it's usually used on linen, cotton and silk. I'm happy with the outcomes, quite experimental without a definite idea of what might happen when I began. I'm inspired to develop a new collection of saddles around these ideas.