**If you are interested in a sold out tenugui, please email [email protected] to request a notification when it will be in stock. Production and delivery of certain tenugui can take up to one month from Arimatsu, Japan.

Machine aided bound-resist in scattered blocks pattern

Technique: Kikai-kumo Shibori -Machine-aided kumo shibori, where a point in a piece of cloth is caught on a hook that retracts into an apparatus where threads automatically wind around the gathered tip. The artisan operator must have a steady hand and a feel for the tension and time it takes to complete a desired amount of binding. The shaped cloth is held firmly while thread is bound from the base of the unit, where the folds are held gathered together, to the top near the hook. The spacing of the thread is even. A machine was invented in 1900s in Arimatsu to repeatedly perform this technique in which the thread is neither knotted nor cut but is carried to the next unit, mimicking the te-kumo shibori done by hand with a hook. Process illustrations are from the book Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing by Wada, Rice, and Barton. (c)1983. The pattern is called Ishidatami, meaning stone pavement.

Process video for kikai-kumo

Pattern: Kumo – Spider (however, when describing this type of shibori, it is references spider webs)

Color: Indigo/White

Approximately 1m x 35cm (39in x 13in)

100% Cotton

Handmade in Arimatsu, Japan

Tenugui are scarf-size, all-purpose towels made of lightweight cotton, used in Japan for centuries and recently popularized and collected because of their beautiful patterns and graphic designs.

Ukiyo-e example: Utagawa Kuninaga (1615-1868)

View the full shibori tenugui collection