Japanese Cotton Scarf for Women – Plum Blossom Shibori Hand-Dyed Shawl

Dyed by Hozuai in Kameoka, Kyoto - the workshop that brought Kyoto's own indigo back after it had been gone for a century.
A 100% cotton stole dyed in hon-ai, true indigo, with baika-shibori - the plum-blossom tie-resist. Each blossom is bound by hand before the cloth goes into the vat, so no two stoles carry the same scatter of flowers. Long enough to wrap twice against air-conditioning, or to fall open over one shoulder.
- Material: 100% cotton
- Indigo / method: Kyoho-ai, Kyoto indigo / baika-shibori, plum-blossom tie-resist
- Size: 56 cm x 160 cm
- Hand-dyed one piece at a time
The workshop - Kyoto once had its own water-blue indigo, praised as kyo-asagi. In 1923 it vanished: imported and chemical indigo pushed it out, and what was left of it became known as maboroshi no kyo-ai, the phantom Kyoto indigo.
Hozuai went looking for it in Tokushima, the old country of Awa indigo, and met a nineteenth-generation indigo master there. His seed, it turned out, had been carried from Kyoto generations earlier. The seed came home - to Hozu, in Kameoka, on the river of the same name.
The fields are worked with local farmers on land that had been left fallow. A row house flooded in the 2013 typhoon was rebuilt as the dyeing studio, where more than 1,500 people a year now put their hands into the vat for the first time.
Shipped directly from Kyoto, Japan. Packed with care for international delivery.