home shop №133

buaisou hand-dyed shibori linen cloth

$99.00 sold out

A linen cloth dipped, folded, and tied by a four-person collective in Tokushima — the only place in Japan where the indigo plant is still grown, fermented, and dyed end-to-end by the same hands.

Almost all "indigo" cloth on the global market is dyed with synthetic indigo — a petroleum derivative invented in 1880, identical at the molecule but absent the depth that fermented plant indigo carries. The plant takes a year to grow. The leaves are dried, fermented in heaps for a hundred days into a substance called sukumo, then mixed into a vat with lye, wheat bran, and sake, and kept alive — fed, warmed, monitored — through every season. A vat that is allowed to die does not come back.

Buaisou are four people in Tokushima — Japan's last indigo region — doing this end-to-end. They grow the indigo, ferment the sukumo, keep their vats alive, and dye the cloth themselves. The shibori on this linen is hand-tied: small folds and bindings made before the dip, then released to reveal the pattern in negative. Each cloth is slightly different because the hand that tied it was.

The blue is the kind of blue that earlier centuries built ceremonies around. It deepens with use and washes the way only fermented indigo washes — slowly, gracefully, into a softer version of itself.

Every purchase funds one sauna session for one cancer patient. The indigo vat must be kept warm through every winter to stay alive. Warmth is literal in the production of this cloth — and warmth is what the funded sauna session gives back.

object№133

makerDuchess

listedMay 6, 2026

edition1 piece

we don't reorder. when it's gone it's gone gone.