Dyer
Okamoto Shiho
Trained for six years at an indigo house in Tokushima before coming home. She keeps the vat at 20°C with wheat bran and lime, and tastes it — really — every morning.
01
The studio
Shinzaike, Echizen, Fukui
Where the indigo lives.
Yamaori works out of a 1950s paper merchant’s house in Echizen, the washi town of Fukui. Shiho dyes, Kenta cuts, and on Saturdays the table is yours.
The house kept its paper smell.
Our grandfather bought the house in 1952 from a merchant who had sold Echizen washi to Osaka banks for forty years. When we opened it again in 2019 the drawers still held rolls of hōsho, and the back room still had the stone floor a vat needs.
We make two things. Ai-zome kozo: sheets formed for us by a mill three streets away, then dipped in our own fermented indigo until they reach the shade on the swatch card. And kami: thin folding squares, cut on a 1961 guillotine and sleeved by hand.
“Indigo is alive. On a cold morning it simply asks for one more day.”
Okamoto Shiho, dyer
02
Fibre to sheet
December to the following spring
How each indigo sheet is made.
- 01 · December
Kozo is cut
Mulberry shoots from growers in Ibaraki, cut after the leaves fall.
- 02 · January
Steamed and stripped
The bark is steamed loose, the dark outer skin scraped away by hand.
- 03 · February
Beaten
Cooked fibre is beaten with wooden mallets until it opens into pulp.
- 04 · March
Formed and dried
The mill rocks pulp across a bamboo screen, then brushes sheets onto cedar boards.
- 05 · All year
Dipped
Shiho lowers each sheet into the vat, airs it, and dips again — up to thirty-two times.
03
The two of us
Siblings, both born in Echizen
Cutter and folder
Okamoto Kenta
A furniture maker who swapped wood for paper. He cuts every kami pack, writes the crane guide cards and runs the Saturday folding table with a pot of hōjicha.
Visit, fold, or write to us.
- Address
- 4-17 Shinzaike, Echizen, Fukui 915-0234 — 12 minutes by bus from Takefu Station
- Shop
- Thursday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00
- Folding table
- Saturdays 13:00–16:00 · ¥1,500 with 20 sheets of kami · no booking for up to four
- Wholesale
- Shops, schools and folding clubs: trade prices from 10 packs. Ask for the list in the form.
- Phone
- +81 778 42 0917