42: John Marshall (transcript)

42: John Marshall (transcript)

 

Where warp meets weft, this is WeaveCast with Syne Mitchell

 

Musical interlude

 

Hello and welcome to WeaveCast. This is episode 42. This episode I am delighted to bring an interview with John Marshal an expert in the field of Japanese textiles. I was really lucky to catch up with him while he was here in Seattle teaching a workshop.

 

Before we get to that interview I’ve got some news.

 

First of all, I am delighted to be back at the microphone. It was good to have a break to focus on some other projects and to figure out the future of WeaveCast and WeaveZine, but it is also really good to be back producing the show.

 

I know that you missed the show because I got emails and I missed the show as well.

 

So – yay!

 

On an interesting note, if you hear some strange noises in the background I am recording the intro for this episode sitting outside in my car.

 

The reason I’m doing this is that it is about 11 o’clock at night and my husband and son are asleep and my house is so small that if I were trying to record inside the house (whispering) I would be talking like this.

 

So I got in my car because cars are supposed to have good acoustics. As you’ll see later, it’s actually quite appropriate for this episode.

 

But I’m a little bit nervous because two days ago the bear came through and just waled on the trash can. So, there is a slight chance that this recording could get really interesting.

 

Okay – other news.

 

I said I was going to go away and work on some projects and figure out some changes I wanted to make to the show. I have done that.

 

The first thing I’m going to do is a new type of scheduling. It’s a bit like the old schedule, but bear with me.

 

I’m going to commit to doing one podcast a month. By that I mean that I will record the interview, I will edit the audio myself, and I will ensure that there is always at least one podcast a month.

 

But the ensemble folks have been doing some wonderful work recording their own interviews and so what I’m going to do is when there is ensemble content, I will feed those in, in addition to the one that I produce myself.

 

So you might have as many as four episodes in a month. Or you might have as few as one. But you can always count on having at least one WeaveCast a month.

 

If you’d like to see some of these up-coming shows things that are recorded and in the can and undergoing production, you can check that out at http://weavezine.com/audio/schedule.

 

I’m also changing the format of the show a bit. WeaveCast and WeaveZine are still very much an experiment in figuring out how to do this in a way that works for you and works for me and works for the site.

 

Feedback I’ve gotten from listeners has been that they really are excited about the interviews and the interviews have grown to be really the heart and centre of WeaveCast, and I’m finding that my own personal weaving stories – I’m telling more of those in my blog because in the blog I can show you pictures.

 

So I’m going to experiment with streamlining the show, making it more about the interview. 

 

I think it will help focus the episodes and I think it will make it easier to get shows out quicker and to highlight the work of the ensemble members.

 

With all these changes I’ve also re-structured how sponsoring an episode works. I’ve made sponsorships more affordable. It’s about half of what it used to cost and you have more options. I’m also going to allow up to 3 sponsors per episode so that will make it easier to schedule the interviews and the content that they want their message to go out with.

 

Information about how that works is up on http://weavezine.com/advertise

 

In other news, Afghans for Afghans – remember them? They’re the wonderful people who co-ordinate with knitters and weavers and crocheters to create handmade items to send overseas to let people in Afghanistan know that there are people over here who care for them and want them to be warm and safe.

 

They are currently looking for handwoven baby blankets for the CURE hospital in Kabul. If you’re interested in being a part of that you can check out their requirements on line and I will have a link to that in the show notes.

 

Speaking of the show notes, I had a new listener point out to me that it would be really helpful if I told you where the show notes are. So if you’re getting this through iTunes and you’re not sure where to go find all those wonderful links and sometimes pictures of what we talked about in the show, you can find that on line at http://weavezine.com/audio.

 

Hallowe’en is just around the corner and I’d like to point out that Noreen Crone-Findlay has written a wonderful feature article for WeaveZine about how to create some cute and slightly spooky Hallowe’en dolls using a potholder loom.

 

It’s really fun. I’m not a big doll weaver but these are just adorable. Should really go check that out. Link in the show notes.

 

There are also some big changes for WeaveZine afoot. If you follow the magazine and since it’s free and on line I don’t know why you wouldn’t, you can check out the home page for more details about that. http://weavezine.com

 

I should also mention that the bookmark kits are back in stock. These are yarn kits to accompany the double heddle bookmark project that’s up on WeaveZine.

 

I worked with Just Our Yarn – a wonderful independent dyer – to design some colourways that would look just gorgeous in a small scale colour and weave of these bookmarks. If you’d like to see the kits or see the article that accompanies them I’ll have links to that up in the show notes. The kits are available in the WeaveZine etsy store.

 

I will warn you though, if you want to see what they look like you’d better check soon because they are going fast.

 

And speaking of sponsorships, we have a lovely new sponsor this episode. Cameron Taylor-Brown is an artist, consultant and educator. She conducts workshops internationally that explore design, colour, creativity, and the collaborative process. Cameron enjoys the interesting conversations that WeaveCast brings to her studio and encourages others to join her in supporting the show.

 

To find out more about Cameron and view her work visit her website at http://www.camerontaylor-brown.com

 

And I will have a link to that in the show notes.

 

Musical interlude

 

SM So I’m here in the van of John Marshall…

 

JM In a parking lot, somewhere.

 

(laughter)

 

SM In Seattle. The lengths we go to to get you good content.

 

Thank you and welcome to the show.

 

JM Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

 

SM You’re an expert in Japanese textiles.

 

JM Uh-huh.

 

SM How did you get started with that interest?

 

JM It’s kind of a long story but the short version of it is that I went to Japan when I was 17 and I was basically apprenticed. I had gone to study doll making, and in the doll making process we were required to choose a branch to cut down, cure the wood, carve the wood. We had to blow the glass for the eyeballs, weave the silk, dye the silk, and do all of the things associated with creating this human figure from scratch.

 

And that’s great. It’s just that in coming back to this country, it’s really hard to earn a living because dolls here aren’t viewed as quite the art form that they are in Japan.

 

So, one phase of my training as I mentioned, was the dye work and actually that’s the part I loved the most. I loved the doll making but the dye work is what I really truly love so my youngest sister suggested that I concentrate on taking these diminutive patterns and enlarging them back to human scale and focus on the dye work which is a little bit more marketable as clothing.

 

SM I want to back up a bit. Most 17 year old boys don’t travel to Japan to learn how to make these exquisite dolls. How did you get there?

 

JM That’s – it’s kind of an easy questions and a hard question to answer. I come from a large family. I’m a middle child. It was easy being the middle child. My parents are both, you know they’re very good loving parents and their goal for each of us was to find satisfaction in life.

 

Now they’re both teachers, but they didn’t necessarily require that we go through standard educational process or anything. They just wanted us to find fulfillment in our lives.

 

So we could each just go about experimenting with who we wanted to be as we grew up. With structure, of course.

 

In my case, I grew up in a tiny town outside of Sacramento called Florin.

 

Florin used to be the largest Japanese-American population outside of Hawaii, and then with World War II evacuations the town was wiped out as people were sent to the concentration camps. But a lot of them came back afterwards and among those were my god parents and so we wound up growing up in a community that was largely Japanese-American culture.

 

So with that in mind, as I grew older and became interested in Japanese things through my god parents and through other people in the community, I wanted to go more to Japan to study these.

 

Now at that time, for me, coming from that environment, Japan was far less alien than say, New York, would be. New York was a scary place to go waaaay over on the other side of the United States.

 

Japan was more comfortable and familiar culturally, so it wasn’t such a leap to go there. So having done babysitting, mowing lawns and things to save the money I decided to just go.

 

It was never an odd thing to be doing. It was never an adventure, really, it was just taken for granted. It’s no different than a kid saving up and buying a bicycle, really. You know, it was something I wanted to do and this is how you do it.

 

In hindsight, I start looking at some of that and I realize that relative to other people’s experience, it might be a little bit odd.

 

But at the time, it wasn’t. It didn’t seem that way at all.

 

SM Now, I love the comparison that Japan seemed less foreign than New York.

 

JM MM-hmm.

 

This is a Californian speaking by the way.

 

(laughter)

 

Sorry.

 

(laughter)

 

I should clarify that.

 

SM I’m from the deep South – it does seem foreign to me.

 

JM Yes, it’s your point of perspective.

 

SM Exactly. Exactly.

 

So you came back from Japan and you started doing dye work.

 

JM Yes.

 

SM Where did you go from there?

 

JM Well, I returned to my parents home in an attempt to get situated. At that point not having a college education, and both of my parents being teachers, although they never required this, I thought well, I should graduate from college to have something to fall back on.

 

So my degree is in Biological Sciences and it does relate to the natural dyeing but it’s not my first and only love.

 

While going to school, while working part time, I began to accumulate inventory and these things, I’m doing it because I love it, but without the real intention of selling and it starts to pile up after a while.

 

Well, there’s a point at which you need to make room for bed, or for whatever else is important, so I started doing shows.

 

And one thing led to another and it seems to have gone fairly well.

 

SM Now I know you’re also an avid collector of textiles?

 

JM Yes.

 

SM Japanese textiles?

 

JM Addict. Yes.

 

(laughter)

 

SM As someone who doesn’t know about Japanese textiles, are there defining characteristics?

 

JM Not quite that clearly so. Japanese fabrics in general, and I think this is easy to say, without being prejudiced about it, actually are the finest in the world.

 

It’s not to say that every culture doesn’t produce something exquisite. They all do. We all do. However, Japan is one of the few countries in the world that has excelled in every single area and in many cases taken it to rather a bizarre extreme of excellence. Far beyond what other cultures have done.

 

And there’s a good reason for that. Not because they’re Japanese. But because that particular culture has always had an affinity for textiles. And they’ve been willing to back it up with cash purchases.

 

So as soon as you have a market driving the industry, then you have artists willing to take chances. You have artists willing to go that next step of making this even more exquisite. Of taking a chance of developing the technology rather than being stuck in a position because no one will pay any more than that.

 

So those are all issues that drive Japanese – technology even today – with cars, or cameras or whatever else we might be purchasing.

 

In the case of textiles they have always had a very high level of education and appreciation across all strata of society.

 

SM Why do you think the Japanese have such an affinity for textiles?

 

JM MMM – I don’t actually know. I think that many cultures mutate off into peculiar directions of their own which become the norm, of course, based on odd ball incidents in history.

 

We as the United States are who we are because a whole series of peculiar incidences. In some recent developments in Europe as an example, with a lot of racism directed towards the black athletes – you know it’s been absolutely horrible. And as Americans we look at that and in some cases say that wouldn’t happen here. Well it did happen here, but we also had the Civil Rights Movement which has not happened in Europe.

 

So we have the Civil Rights Movement that happened through many people who stood up and made their presence known, and that makes us culturally who we are today.

 

What if Rosa Parks hadn’t existed? What if Martin Luther King or Malcolm X had not existed? Would we be different, or not?

 

What if the Civil Rights hadn’t happened? Would we be any different?

 

But they did happen, and we are who we are.

 

In Japan through history there were a number of very important influential political figures, royal figures, who had this keen interest in textiles.

 

There was one emperor Sholto Kotaichi (?) who in about the 600’s – just a rough date – was a pack rat. And he collected everything you could imagine that came to them from along the Silk Road. Now that includes Coptic textiles – Japan has one of the best non-excavated collections of Coptic textiles…

 

SM Wow.

 

JM …because they were contemporary collections. 

 

Greek coins. Greek vases. Persian, Chinese textiles, Persian rugs. All sorts of things. It’s just mind-boggling what this guy collected.

 

At his death, his wife donated them all to a temple and built a storehouse to house all of them. As a result they have had this continuously available collection of the best in the world at that time.

 

Japan has never been invaded. The only time that a foreign occupation ever happened to Japan was after World War II. So they have this unbroken history, not of peace, but an unbroken history of being left unmolested so that these things are not lost in battles. They’re not subject to fire, they’re not subject to pestilence, and they have survived and been an influence in the culture as the Japanese revered these collections.

 

Of course Sholto Kotaichi wasn’t the only person, but he was representative of his era and the passion for luxury. That influence has carried down through the ages to the point where many governments in Japan have been concerned about the consumption of the Japanese with textiles, with ceramics, with metalwork, and they would pass laws, sumptuary laws that prohibited the population from spending more than a certain amount on these luxuries.

 

So you would have textiles that were limited. You could not have silk embroidery and certain types of dyeing and certain types of weaves in combination in one piece because it was too exquisite and therefore competed with the government in terms of taxes, in terms of warfare and that kind of thing.

 

But nonetheless, the Japanese would find ways to subvert the law. They would make things, rather than larger and more expensive, they went into miniaturization and started having minute images, which were not prohibited, but twice as expensive because they were twice as hard to do.

 

So because the law prohibited the volume of work, the Japanese went the opposite extreme and became experts in miniaturization.

 

SM I wondered where that came from.

 

JM Yes. There are lots of things that again, that if those laws hadn’t been passed – would they have been as skilled as they were at transistor radios. You know, it’s hard to know.

 

But again, it’s a whole series of serendipitous events that occur to direct a population and of course, it’s a normal occurrence. 

 

I mean, another analogy might be hoop skirts, in the west. Why on earth would anybody wear a hoop skirt?

 

Well, you don’t wake up one day and say “I’m going to put on a hoop skirt.”   As the fashion changes incrementally until it winds up at this bizarre extreme, but it got there in an easily traceable fashion.

 

SM Are there any techniques unique to Japan?

 

JM I wouldn’t say, quite honestly, that the Japanese are terribly original in their techniques. You know, if you look throughout history, of course many textile techniques aren’t unique to any country. You know, they’re sort of, human solutions to human problems, or human needs.

 

The Japanese I would say are far better at taking a technique and then intellectually exploring it to its extreme. So that they have become, as well as people in India, by far the masters in the world of the screen resists, shibori or tie-dye.

 

And they’ve become extreme masters in gold-leaf woven textiles. And they’ve become the world masters in tapestry weave. 

 

Now of course there are the wonderful kilims of the Middle East, there are all these different exquisite textiles that occur all over the world and each culture has the thing it’s best at. It just happens that Japan is included in the best for every one of those techniques. And that’s where it’s bizarre and truly a world treasure of knowledge.

 

And they’re good at recording, revering, storing and passing on the information. That’s also crucial.

 

SM Did you ever go back to Japan after your first doll making class and study any other techniques?

 

JM Well actually, it wasn’t a matter of going for doll making class per se – I went for 5 years to be apprenticed in it, in the process, so it’s not really one class.

 

It takes 5 years to make one of these dolls. And so it’s an on-going process as you study specific techniques under different teachers.

 

During that period of time, of course, I was there studying, returned home to finish up – it was a few years before I went back, but then I’ve gone back – um, you know, usually once or twice a year over the course of the last 30 years.

 

Partly for buying supplies, partly for catching up on techniques, partly for research, a wide range, all of which are combined of course – I’m visiting friends, too.

 

SM You’ve written a book called Make Your Own Japanese Clothes that’s been out for a while. What was the motivation behind this book?

 

JM To be honest, I had no intention of writing that book at all. Okay? I wasn’t particularly interested in writing it either, but a woman who has become a good friend over the years is an editor for ???? International, one of the Japanese publishing companies.

 

They wanted me to do a dye book which was a logical thing for me to do. As it happens there is an excellent book that had come out the year before by a friend of mine, Barbara Stefan. It’s an excellent dye book. We have very different approaches. We do things differently. The information we feel is important is different. Nonetheless, it’s an excellent book and you don’t need two good ones out at the same time.

 

But I didn’t want to turn away an opportunity to start publishing. So I suggested that we do the sewing book because it’s something that was not out on the market. I could do this now, and it could be a place holder until we let Barbara’s book go – a good length of time – and then jump in and publish mine.

 

Well, as it happened, as time went on the dye book never got published. So in the meantime, what I’ve been doing is collecting this body of information and presenting it in English. Most of my research is in the original Japanese for it, but to present it in English to add my changes and suggestions and I’ve been putting together a series of dvd’s that cover absolutely thoroughly, every aspect of this type of katazome.

 

It’s not a money making thing because you can’t get 30 years research returned in the sale of a dvd but it is important to me to preserve that knowledge in English for people. And the few people who are interested in it will, I think, learn from it and then take what I have to offer another step further, and eventually that may become an American technique that we have to offer the world.

 

SM If somebody wanted to find out more about these dvd’s, where would they go?

 

JM The best bet for any of this, teaching or otherwise is go to my website http://www.johnmarshall.to

 

TO stands for Tonga.

 

SM Can you describe what katazome is a little bit more?

 

JM The katazome, as the term is commonly used in Japan means literally stencil dyeing. Now there are a range of stencil dyeing techniques including silk screening. This is not silk screening.

 

In this case a stencil is cut from handmade mulberry paper that’s been lacquered with persimmon tannin and then smoked.

 

The image is cut out. A silk leno weave is laminated to that, which gives you a strong stencil. The stencil is placed on the silk and a resist, kind of like wax in batik, but a resist is pushed through the stencil. The resist is made from rice and bran. It is totally non-toxic, gets just washed out into the garden if you like, and that then helps to define the patterning around which the dyes are painted.

 

SM And you’re using natural dyes?

 

JM Yes. For my work I use only natural dyes and that includes juice dyes like onion skins, marigolds, logwood, but it also includes a variety of pigments like dirt. It can include pigments like powdered seashell – any naturally occurring pigment.

 

SM Why did you choose to specialize with the natural dyes?

 

JM Initially it wasn’t really a conscious choice but for that period of time a lot of toxic items were out and available and they just didn’t feel comfortable. The natural dyes I can make myself, the synthetic ones you really can’t.

 

So gradually I realized that if I want to do this my whole life I need to choose something safe. There are many wonderful synthetic dyes out there so I don’t mean to dismiss them. It’s just that with natural dyes they have a many thousand year history with mankind and as a result there are toxic aspects. But we know what the toxic aspects are and we know how they affect our bodies. We can avoid those and deal with them.

 

In the case of synthetic dyes they’re too new to really know what form they pollute the environment. They’re too new to know how they affect our bodies over a long time of exposure. So that’s why I steered clear of them.

 

SM That long view perspective seems to me to be very Japanese.

 

JM It is, but all of humanity has that history. You know we don’t always recognize it but nothing is independent, nothing springs up independent of the actions of our ancestors. We’re all products of that.

 

And so you could look at the ancestral influences of your particular lineage, and trace it back to the Mayflower or where ever, or you can look at it as one continuous history of mankind regardless of what country of what the current representatives wind up in. We all stem back to some common culture and some common genetic link that allows us to process information in very similar ways and arrive at similar conclusions and similar solutions.

 

SM So I can’t help but be curious – does your background in biology ever help you with your natural dyeing?

 

JM In theory it should.

 

(laughter)

 

In practice there’s as much folk tradition in it as there is chemistry. But I think what a background in science and math helps is to have an analytical mind. That helps to ask why? Just because somebody says it’s so, might be so, but if you also know why then you know the boundaries associated with it.

 

If you know why something does what it does, then you know how far you can push it. If it doesn’t work, you can go back and analyze why it didn’t work and re-discover its boundaries.

 

So that’s very useful in being innovative as opposed to being tied strictly to tradition and someone else’s limitations.

 

SM This is a little bit silly, but whenever I talk to somebody who knows a different language I try to get how to say ‘weaver’ in that language?

 

JM Ori-mono (?) Well, Ori-mono is “we are weaves” or “weaving” so a weaver would be ori-mono-ka (?)

 

(laughter)

 

Ori-masa(?) is the verb to weave. Ori-mono(?) means woven things.

 

SM Thank you.

 

What’s next for you coming up?

 

JM Well, actually from here I go down to do a show at the Golden Door, which is sort of the fancy-schmancy health spa in southern California. They’re having their 50th anniversary and I’ve been associated with them for several decades so I’m going down to help with that and then I’ll be driving to Rochester, NY to do a series of classes, from there turn right around and drive to Kansas City to do a Surface Design conference coming up.

 

SM Busy guy.

 

JM Well, yes. Get a lot of miles in. 

 

SM Well, thank you so much for taking time to…

 

JM I appreciate that Syne, thank you.

 

Musical interlude

 

Once again I’d like to thank our sponsor. Cameron Taylor-Brown is an artist, consultant and educator. She conducts workshops internationally that explore design, colour, creativity and the collaborative process. Cameron enjoys the interesting conversations that WeaveCast brings into her studio, like this recent one with John Marshall, and encourages others to join her in supporting the show.

 

To find out more about Cameron and view her work, visit her website at http://www.camerontaylor-brown.com

 

WeaveCast would like to thank the following donating listeners for their support: Catherine, Gina, Denice, Donna, Virginia, Ginger, Sharon and Carrie. Thanks so much for supporting the show.

 

Musical interlude

 

Hooray – I got through all that and was not attacked by a bear! Happy Hallowe’en y’all.

 

Musical interlude