Yonezawa Artistry
Local textiles reflect a passion to create and determination to preserve
Formal kimono safflower with luxurious crimson hue. Photo: Nitta Fabric Art Inc.
Legacy and vision. Two words that describe and drive Gentaro Nitta’s Nitta Textile Arts and Michiko Yamakuchi’s Yozando. Both are eminent textile enterprises based in Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture, and manifest a celebration of the past as the industry looks toward the future.
Nitta Textile Art Inc.
To fifth-generation head Gentaro Nitta, “the past is not a burden, but a window.” Nitta Textile Art’s forward-thinking production model triumphantly draws on the past to produce one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted elegance made from the highest quality silk, woven on wooden looms by local experts employing skills passed down for centuries. These silk masterpieces, painstakingly colored with locally sourced dyes made from hand-picked safflowers, radiate colors ranging from the subtlest hues of pearl to the company’s renowned shades of crimson.
It’s not that Nitta’s traditions—its safflower cultivation and silk dyeing techniques—are separate processes; rather the agricultural and artistic traditions merge to form an integrated whole, developed together over centuries and applied organically and harmoniously in response to the land and local climate.
Conditions, Nitta explains, change throughout the year, according to the season. In sum, the human arts—be they agricultural or artistic—depend on and reflect the demands of the land and the challenges of the climate.
The Yoneori Komon range includes a wide variety of products with seasonal as well as traditional designs. Photo: Yamakuchi Orimono Yozando
Yamakuchi Orimono Yozando
Designer, proprietress, and curator Michiko Yamakuchi leads a whirlwind tour of her multiple facilities, including a quaint retail shop, coffee-house art gallery, and petite cabin that houses her coffee bean roasting ovens. An extraordinary manufacturing site reveals the enormous Japanese-Italian weaving machines which bring Michiko’s designs to life, while a cavernous art gallery houses art pieces by internationally recognized artist Hideo Yamakuchi.
Michiko’s creativity is manifest in the intricate, unbroken patterns of her seasonal designs (shown above), be they purses, handbags, tablemats, coasters, or traditional furoshiki wrapping cloths. The seamless patterns echo the finest, perfectly aligned wallpapers.
Colors and designs are abundant and change with the seasons; winter holiday products are currently on view. Items are reversible—for example, red on white on one side, white on red on the other.
Most other products affirm the designer’s emphasis on a practical aesthetic that instills beauty in everyday objects, such as bags for smartphones and temple diaries, and by using washable cotton fabrics and creating designs that reduce leftover materials.
Together, Nitta Textile Art and Yamakuchi Orimono Yozando provide a window not only into Yonezawa’s artistic past but also its future.
