Susan Briscoe - The Book of Boro: Techniques and Patterns Inspired by Traditional Japanese Textiles

Once something becomes the fabric of our memories, it moves from the material to the non-material in its importance. It becomes hard to part with.

Sheila Cliffe, Japanese textile researcher and kimono stylist

The kanji characters forboroalso read asranru, meaning rag, scrap, tattered clothes, a defect, run-down or shabby. While it has connotations of worthlessness and junk, to its original makersboromono(literally rag thing), as it is sometimes called, represented a desire to lovingly clothe their families and keep them warm in very harsh environments, such as the remote farming areas of northern Japan. It was an everyday repair. They couldnt afford or access new fabric, so they used recycled cloth to make what they needed. Piecing, stitching and mending were once widespread throughout Japan, but remained important for longer in areas where new fabrics were not manufactured so were scarce and expensive. Layers of patches, worn and torn, created a random,tactile beauty.

The inside of this ragged, unlined hanten noragi (half wear work jacket) with makisode (wrapped sleeves) has raw-edge, heavily darned patches in shades of indigo. Tohoku, c.1900.

Cotton cannot be grown in northern Tohoku, on Japans main island, where winter is cold and long and the hot summer too short. Grown commercially in Japan since the 1600s, first as a luxury fibre, it was cultivated south of the Aizu region by the early nineteenth century and traded second hand around Japan. Before mechanized spinning and weaving, second-hand fabric was valuable. The far north of Tohoku and the western coast were supplied by sea via theKitamaesen(north front route), linking the Kansai region (around Kyoto) with the northwestern coast of Tohoku. Ships travelled the route once a year, leaving Osaka at the beginning of April, and traded all along the coast as far as Hokkaido.

Generally,kimono(which simply means wearing thing) are modular garments, made from a series of rectangles with no shaping, so recycling is easy. Even the V-shaped front opening, where the long collar is attached diagonally, is not cut, and the fabric is folded into the collar to give extra bulk and body. One kimono uses one whole bolt of narrow cloth (), approximately 1315in (3538cm) wide and 3638ft (1111.6m) long, sewn with a centre back seam. Simple shapes can be unpicked and the fabric pieces rearranged to even out wear, the back becoming the front or the sleeves wrist opening being reattached to the body. Unpicked for washing and resewn, kimono fabric must have been frequently turned. Removable, washable collar covers, often made from black sateen, were sewn on to protect the kimono collar from wear and to prevent stains from hair oil (used to fix the elaborate hairstyles of the Edo era [16051868]). The collar cover can still be seen today on all kimono, but now usually matches. One exception to the collar shaping seems to have been paddednoragi(work wear), such asdonzajackets, where the V-shape was cut, perhaps to eke outthe fabric or reduce bulk from the wadding (batting).

In rural Aomori prefecture, while prosperous local landowners could buy a whole second-hand cotton kimono, poorer villagers could only affordtsugi(scraps). Five or six women would club together to buy a 4852lb (2224kg) bale of second-hand cloth from itinerant traders. They washed the dirty, damaged rags in lye, removing the worst of the grime by scrubbing with rough fish skins, and starched the scraps with rice water before grading them. The fabrics bore the marks of previous use, such as worn collar edges. While the worst of the scraps were torn into narrow strips to make