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education programme : AMBIGUOUS SPACES : Matilda McQuaid Paper Transforming the everyday Over the last fifteen years there have been two profound discoveries for me that are – coincidently -- similar in a number of ways, and not in the least is they are both textile based. I have the rare opportunity to talk about them both with you this afternoon. You’re certainly familiar with the first -- Reiko Sudo and her company Nuno – who are the reason for this symposium and wonderful exhibition 21 21: The Textile Vision of Reiko Sudo and Nuno. It’s an honor to talk today about Reiko and Nuno – two names so entwined together that it is impossible to think about one without the other. And in part I owe a debt to Reiko in pursuing the second discovery -- technical textiles -- or those high performance fabrics that are used for a wide range of applications -- from architecture, medicine, transportation to aerospace and the environment. Fifteen years ago, when I began working on the idea of technical textiles as an exhibition, Reiko was part of these early discussions. She herself has been an avid promoter of these high performance fabrics -- taking inspiration from them and utilizing their industrial technology to create extraordinary fashion and decorative textiles. Both of these discoveries lead to exhibitions – one in 1998, Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles – a show that featured Nuno’s work as well as other designers working in Japan. The second -- Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance -- just closed at the end of October and included not only textiles but their applications too. For the next twenty minutes I’m going to focus on the work of Nuno discussing it on more of a personal level in terms of what fascinated me about the textiles when I saw them more than fifteen years ago on my first trip to Japan and why they are so distinctive when compared with so many other contemporary textiles. And then I will introduce you briefly to the world of technical textiles showing the commonalities between Nuno and technical textiles and why each can be seen as some of the most beautiful and innovative design being produced today. One only has to look at the title of some of Nuno’s works to understand the inspiration and how each textile designer working at Nuno approaches their task. The titles are tangible – many describing the everyday objects that surround these designers in Japan: Brickyard, Moss Velvet, Feather Flurries, Shutter, Crackled Cloth, Slipstream, Pack Ice, Bubble Pack, Stratus, and Mica. The textiles transform mundane words into an altogether new aesthetic language while at the same time the words can be the creative source for the designs. A flurry of papers can be the inspiration for Feather Flurries or dried persimmons hanging from the eaves of rural farmhouses might be the source for the pattern of this cotton and rayon fabric. Rolls of paper, the calligraphy and texture of these sake bottles, the play of light and shadows on this wall, and the rhythm and beautiful patina of these monumental gates help to make up Nuno’s visual vocabulary. The everyday is the point of departure for these designers and their translation skills are completely acute. Nuno means functional textile and since its founding in 1984 by Junichi Arai and Reiko Sudo it has combined the best of the past and present. Reiko came to design textiles through the kimono – a source for so much innovation in fashion and textile design in Japan, even today. Later she earned a degree in textile design at Musashino Art University after which she worked as a freelance designer for Kanebo, a major textile company. But perhaps her most influential relationship was when she met Junichi Arai in 1982. One of the most important textile designers today, Arai was interested in fusing industrial and the handmade as well as traditional techniques and innovative finishing processes, to create a totally new textile. Reiko shared this vision and has carried it forth as the head designer of Nuno, after Arai left in 1987, while expanding upon it and making the work accessible to a wider audience. The team of Arai and Sudo evolved into what is now a larger, but still relatively small team of designers (only about 23 since 1987) with Reiko as director and head designer. The production process is an extremely important part of their work and as Reiko has said, “it [production process] becomes a narrative for their work”. Often the production of a textile begins with hand techniques -- whether it is cutouts or sketches (GRAFFITTI) – but it can also continue into the actual production process if industrial techniques cannot be found. Here we see one of the stages of Feather Flurries when the looms actually have to be stopped in order for someone to insert a feather into the pocket. Or there is an elaborate wrapping process involved in the making of Mica. After bunching polyester fabric into a tightly packed ball, it goes through an intensive heat set process that permanently creases the fabric turning it into a multilayered glittering textile. Or in this demonstration of making the prototype for Jellyfish where industrial vinyl polychloride – with a 50% heat shrinkage ratio (developed for such uses as car seat covers) is sewn onto a polyester organdy and then it goes through a flash heat treatment – in this case a microwave. A variation of this process is used when making large quantities -- the fabric gets an adhesive screen printed in a checkerboard design, which partially affixes the two fabrics together. When it is exposed to heat, polyester -- a thermoplastic fabric -- shrivels where sewn or adhered to the industrial vinyl polychloride and retains the crinkles even after the vinyl is peeled away. Here we have an interesting demonstration of how an industrial material and process has been used in combination with a relatively ordinary fabric – the polyester organdy – to create an entirely new texture. And texture is at the core of how Nuno defines beauty. As Reiko has said: “Textiles must be beautiful…and in my sense, texture – the tactile element – is the most important thing.” Other textures: In Nuno’s Terrazzo Felt, discarded Nuno fabric is scattered on raw wool and joined using an industrial needlepunching process (used primarily in the backing for carpets) . The effect is transformative. Similarly, stainless steel fiber used as a reinforcement in car tires was an inspiration for Spattered Stainless Steel. After much trial and error, Reiko proposed a coating method that spattered nickel, chrome and iron amalgam onto polyester. She used a traditional kimono technique of coating paper with gold or silver foil as a point of departure and managed to find just the right softness and texture to create a textile that looks like liquid mercury. Continuing with Nuno’s metal series is this Copper cloth where the same thread used for telephone lines has been coated with a polyurethane coating that protects against electric shock and signal noise as well as patina and brittleness. The warp or vertical threads are of Promix: a Japanese fiber regenerated from imported casein protein power made from Australian milk. Softer materials like paper are regularly used in Nuno’s work. Japanese paper has been used in fashion for centuries – as raincoats, as the base material around which gold and silver foil is wrapped to make metallic thread. In Slipstream bundled strips of paper are used in the weft and woven with silk organdy. Long floats of paper create patterns reminiscent of flowing water. In Patched Paper, a more three dimensional effect is achieved when a polyester base fabric, incorporates strips of Japanese paper in the weft which are then cut by hand to create this hairy effect. The centuries-old technique of folding paper is even integrated into the manufacturing of a Nuno scarf. It starts with making the prototype and then increasing it to full scale. Polyester is then pushed into the crevices, clipped to the origami mold and sandwiched between color transfer print paper. After a heat set process the result is a permanently pleated and colored scarf. Another traditional textile technique that Nuno has integrated into their repertoire is a variation on shibori, which usually relies on a laborious handwrapping and dyeing of the textile. Relying again on the thermoplastic qualities of polyester, the fabric is pushed through holes, then sandwiched between color transfer print paper, and finally subjected to high heat and pressure. The outcome is a softly, puckered surface. Nuno has developed their own version of printed textiles, which creates one-of-a-kind fabrics rather than a uniform repeat. In their Scrapyard series, rusty materials like nails, barbed wire, and iron plates are used to create the patterns. Iron oxide or rust can actually oxidize fibers over time, effectively print-dyeing the fabric as you see with these metal plates. Different types of traditional resist techniques have also inspired their textiles. In this example, transparent silk organdy is painted with a starch paste and the fabric is immersed in a calcium nitrate, which causes the exposed or unpainted areas to crimp and bunch into opaque clumps. Resist-covered areas retain their painted patterns in the original base cloth. I could go on and on with examples showing how Nuno experiments with surface techniques or combines threads with incompatible shrink ratios to yield unprecedented sculptural textures. There are never any mistakes in a Nuno textile – Reiko and her designers turn around this notion and use it as a source of knowledge for future use. They have developed a unique formula using a few key and overarching components: industrial process + hand technique + ordinary material, the sum of which creates textiles of startling artistry and beauty. It is this perfect balance of different techniques and unlikely sources which makes Nuno’s work so distinctive when compared with so many other textiles. If we understand Nuno’s work by this equation, we can understand some of the similarities that Nuno fabrics have with the technical textiles featured in Extreme Textiles. Whereas Nuno’s ultimate intention is to create beautiful fabrics, technical textiles were never meant to be beautiful or decorative; only to be high performance and to function often under extreme conditions. Performance is such a key criterion that we organized the show around 5 essential requirements: STRONGER, LIGHTER, FASTER, SMARTER, and SAFER. So we see in this image a few examples of the type of applications of technical textiles, each one representing a different category: an extremely light and strong carbon fiber composite rotor blisk – a machine part used in turbine engines, a knitted heart bag used for people who suffer from degenerative heart failure, a carbon fiber composite racing bike, a flexible wing suit used by flying enthusiasts, and the Mars Lander Airbags which protected the rovers when they landed on the surface of Mars. How close these technical textiles come to having similar traits of beauty or at least the formal qualities that we admire in Nuno’s textiles! Look at this industrial liner and these geotextiles or textiles for the earth – used primarily to prevent soil erosion – share the richness and randomness of line as we see in Rubberband. This geotextile -- also used to prevent soil erosion and enhance the germination process -- has the same structure as Nuno’s Honeycomb made entirely out of a strong stiff paper filament developed by a Japanese paper manufacturer. And using a tightly twisted worsted wool in this Superhoneycomb, we get a much softer and puffier textile. Even some of the textile techniques are similar. This example of machine embroidered lace from the early 20th century and this contemporary medical implant used inside the body and specifically designed for someone who lost much of his shoulder due to a tumor, were manufactured by sewing or embroidering onto a base cloth that is then dissolved away leaving behind a textile structure. Nuno does this with Tsugihagi and Shutters – in one leaving behind a patchwork of old Nuno textiles and in the other a semi-transparent surface of brown, curling tendrils. Metallic fiber is used for many different applications in technical textiles. This 100% knitted stainless steel fabric – only several inches wide – is used in transporting car windshields during the manufacturing process. These knitted stainless steel bracelet-like forms are used as filtration devices in industrial machinery. And here we have Nuno’s Stress and Stripes which combines a needlepunch process with a metallic coating. Nuno essentially has taken the most beautiful effects of an industrial manufacturing process and material like stainless steel to create an innovative fashion fabric. Switching to copper and brass, this fabric is used as a foundation on which to laminate materials together. Its herringbone pattern insures an efficient transmission of heat as well as no visible pattern of the textile on the materials being laminated. Copper becomes the primary fiber in this shielding fabric, which protects equipment against electromagnetic interference. One can barely distinguish these function-only fabrics from Nuno’s own version of Copper cloth as the same qualities that attracted Nuno’s designers to use copper for more decorative and experimental applications are instead used for purely functional reasons in the previous two examples. It is impossible to think of a Nuno textile as anything but a three dimensional object. One can imagine that the shimmering surface of this loosely woven carbon fiber -- used in sports equipment or in sailboats --could have inspired Nuno’s (although it didn’t) embossed stainless steel, although the materials are very different. And this camouflage fabric used by the British Army could certainly be confused with Nuno’s Jellyfish although they come to their sculptural solutions with entirely different textile techniques and for entirely different purposes. And Nuno fabrics can also define and reinvent three dimensional spaces – making them more experiential, sumptuous, engaging and memorable. One only has to look at Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque and this translucent space divider that creates a foggy, atmospheric environment within the building. Or the hand embroidered fabrics made for the Louis Vuitton store made by skillful craftsmen who normally embroider wedding kimonos. And finally the extraordinary fabrics that were used to upholster the seats and used for the theater curtain (spattering fabric) of the Matsumoto Performing Arts Center. Lighting, textiles, interior come together to create a true theatrical experience. What is interesting about Nuno’s textiles and the examples of some of the industrial fabrics that I showed you are that we can end up with similar forms, sometimes using very similar textile techniques. Form and technique are intentional, but for very different purposes – one for beauty the other for performance. In addition, the hand plays just as important a role in creating technical textiles as in creating Nuno’s Scrapyard series. With many of the carbon fiber composite applications – from bike wheels and frames to racing sculls and ski helmets, handcraftsmanship often determines winners from losers. But in the end, each exemplifies beauty in its own way. The tire cord fabric that you see on the screen and this stainless steel fabric by Nuno have the same incredible drapery and suppleness. However, one provides strength for tires, the other a slinky covering for the body. Both are equally beautiful and equally relevant in thinking about textiles, design, artistry, creativity, and innovation. This comparison is proof of Nuno’s vision of the future as stated by Reiko in the exhibition catalogue: “Nuno will try to breathe in the atmosphere of the times and turn it into fabric.” Thank you, Reiko and Nuno, for sharing your world and fabric with us.
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