USA: San Francisco PDT 10AM
Mar 22 (Sun)
Textile Arts Council, San Francisco Museums
A recording will be available for 14 days following the talk.
The Textile Arts Council, San Francisco Museums, is producing the live ZOOM talk by Jorie Johnson, of JoiRae Textiles, Kyoto. Jorie’s talk introduces some of her discoveries during her extensive research into unusual felt works which surprisingly arrived at the last depot of the Silk Road in Japan. For more information about this ZOOM event.
Join us on Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 10AM PDT (San Francisco time) GET TICKETS
Overview
Saturday Lecture with Jorie Johnson
The presentation will take place ONLY over ZOOM.
Eventbrite tickets are for NON TAC members who would like to view the live Zoom broadcast. A recording will be available for 14 days following the talk.
Textile Arts Council Members: You do NOT need to purchase a ticket, a link will be sent from Zoom the week of the event.
Kyoto and Nara, the oldest capitals of Japan, were fundamentally the last depots of the Silk Road to the Far East. There, wool felts, objects of fascination and desire have been accumulated over the centuries, perhaps because Japan was a land of sericulture, not of sheep.
The oldest examples are found in the Repository in Nara, which houses the mid-8th-century Tang Period collection of Kasen felt rugs with floral pattern inlay, as well as single-color versions. The colors analyzed were indigo, sappanwood, madder, and “tannins”. Depths of the three basic colors: blue, red, and yellow were skillfully used (and used to over-dye) to make, for example, the amazing Kasen no. 2, probably the most beautiful felt carpet in the world, using a borrowed brocade pattern of double-roundels of floral images.
Then, there is a time lag until we see items of various genres from the late 18th and early 19th centuries found in private collections. A style of balanced tie-dye resist patterns in 2-3 colors was used by some Japanese Tea masters in anterooms. Also, solid-color felt rugs with “stepped borders” were used by Chinese calligraphers to lay their Washi paper on.
Another technique of direct application by brush of indigo, tannin (persimmon), and Sumi ink (perhaps from China, Tibet, or Korea) on finer felts featuring “Literati Utensils” such as Chinese calligraphy equipment, flower arrangement motifs, and other auspicious symbols.
Also, a wheat-paste resist technique (easily mistaken for stenciling) applied by hand strokes with wooden tools, and thereafter dip-dyed red. Older works have been classified by dealers as from Tibetan temples, but could they have been donated and actually represent auspicious wedding felts from the southwestern region of China, which are still being made today?
In the 18th century, solid-color felt mats were imported by the thousands, as recorded in the port of Nagasaki’s tax records. In the early 19th century, a workshop was established at a shrine in Nagasaki, staffed by Chinese artisans who produced sets of five-color solid-felt rugs with an interesting dyeing method for a particularly bright red.
Briefly, I will introduce contemporary works (20th & 21st c.) produced by the JoiRae Textiles studio in Kyoto, and this will bring us up to date on the capability of the wool fiber, which still enhances living and working interiors, as well as the body and soul.
Jorie Johnson
Born into a Boston wool merchant’s household, Jorie Johnson studied Textile Design for Industry at Rhode Island School of Design, then studied and taught at two Finnish institutions. Now residing in Kyoto for the last thirty years, she re-established her studio, JoiRae Textiles, which focuses on the expression of felt-making in our modern times.
A fellow for The Imperial Household Agency Nara she has been studying the mid-8th c. Tang Dynasty felts in the Shoso-in repository since 2011 (see HALI no.196, UK).
She is a recognized leader of contemporary feltmaking and has written two books and is a contributing author to publications on the subject of historical and contemporary feltmaking.
Selected for such exhibitions as “Artwear, Fashion and Anti-fashion”, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, “HATS: an Anthology by Stephen Jones”, Victoria & Albert, London, “Fashioning Felt”, at The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, NYC, and has work in these collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among other institutions.
Jorie is the owner and principal designer of JoiRae Textiles, a university lecturer across Japan, and researches indigenous felt techniques found along the Silk Road. She has collaborated with Japanese clothing design firms as well as independent bag and footwear designers. Extra research has been in the use of natural Sumi ink for application on silk and lacquer application on felt vessels and accessories. Her art work focuses on hand-felted wool wearables and fine art for the body, environ, and soul.
Photo by Jorie Johnson, Shibori mosen, Yoshioka Family Collection
Photo by Jorie Johnson- Kasen No.17 replica details