Review | Stitching is like drawing for Reiko Sudo, creative force of NUNO Japanese textiles, whose innovations she celebrates in a new book
- Reiko Sudo reflects on what goes into creating the extraordinary fabrics developed by NUNO in Japan, inspired by everything from jellyfish to chance to lentils
- The company, whose name means ‘cloth’, has brought material-making almost to philosophical experimentation
NUNO: Visionary Japanese Textiles, by Reiko Sudo and Naomi Pollock, pub. Thames & Hudson
NUNO: Visionary Japanese Textiles is an artefact in its own right.
Big, gorgeous, almost architectural, it is packed with images of some of the extraordinary fabrics made in the past 50 years or so by the textile company NUNO from its headquarters in Kiryu, two hours north of Tokyo.
Nuno is the Japanese word for “cloth”, but somehow by naming itself so simply, the company has brought material-making almost to philosophical levels of experimentation.
There are fabrics inspired by jellyfish. And scraps. And mushrooms and stringiness and chance. And disruption. And lentils. And heraldic beasts. And the travertine limestone whites of Turkish walls.
The book is organised by concepts. Fuwa fuwa (fluffy); shiwa shiwa (wrinkled); shima shima (striped); kira kira (a lovely word, meaning both dazzling and messy); suke suke (flimsy); zawa zawa (frenetic); and finally, boro boro, which means crumbly, or “the faded glory of things as they age”.
