An Afternoon of Handwork with Yurio Seki

The host of the Handcraft Club on what "making" gives to everyday life.

It's been more than ten years since designer Yurio Seki moved to Higashikawa. While continuing to design textiles and paper under the name "salvia," she opened a dyeing and weaving studio in this town, and serves as curator of ensembles' Handcraft Club.

Afternoons at the club are quiet. Talking isn't forbidden. But while dipping cloth into the indigo vat or passing the weft, everyone naturally falls silent. "When your hands get busy, your head gets free," Seki says. "That free time is probably the greatest luxury."

You don't have to get good

The Handcraft Club has no tests or levels. You don't even need to be better than last time. "It's not a place you come to get good — it's a place you come to move your hands. The result is a bonus." So first-timers and tenth-timers puzzle in the same way at the same table. Partway through, you realize that time spent puzzling is the main event.

Materials come from Higashikawa and its surroundings as much as possible. Yellow dyed with onion skins from the fields. A loom shuttle made from branches in nearby woods. "When you know where the material came from, the color looks different." Holding the finished cloth up to the sun, it truly was the color of some Higashikawa scenery I'd seen.

At four in the afternoon, when the western sun comes through the studio windows, the day's work slowly winds down. What you take home is one small piece of cloth. But one participant said: "Every time I look at it, I remember that quiet afternoon. That alone makes a week in Tokyo a little different." That's probably what handwork gives to life.