Facebook Instagram Pinterest Twitter
BECOME A MEMBER
REGISTER
DONATE

12 ISS Workshop with Kenta Watanabe: Sukumo Indigo Dyeing- Basel

A Next Generation Aishi (Japanese Sukumo Indigo Seed-to-Dye Farmer) Shares a Traditional Japanese Indigo Dyeing Process.

Tuesday, September 29, 2026
1:30 PM – 5:00 PM CEST
Basel, Switzerland

Instructor: Kenta Watanabe from Tokushima, Japan
Skill Level: All

In this 3-hour hands-on workshop,
You’ll leave not only with your own hand-dyed samples, but with embodied knowledge—of rhythm, patience, and working in partnership with natural materials. Kenta’s workshops are immersive, tactile, and quietly transformative with the full vitality of sukumo, the traditional Japanese indigo dye, unfolding as you work—its scents, its textures, its living presence. The experience becomes an invitation to slow down. To make with your hands. To reconnect with an ancient, sustainable way of creating.

  • This workshop follows Kenta’s presentation, “The Story of Sukumo—from seed to vat,” given on the natural dye panel over the weekend.
  • Kenta will demonstrate how to prepare a live indigo vat—an alchemy that relies on his carefully prepared organic sukumo, water, and natural fermentation principles. The matured, ready-to-dye vat is prepared for the class two weeks in advance.
  • You will be instructed in gentle ways of handling cloth with intention—folding, clamping, and binding using itajime shibori techniques.
  • The dye reveals an almost magical process of nature: with repeated dipping in the vat, the fabric’s color shifts from green to deep blue through oxidation.
  • Build layers of pattern and tone, creating textiles that are entirely your own.
  • Learn how to care for, refresh, and work with a natural indigo vat at home or in the studio.

 

You’ll have an opportunity to share your thought processes and results for critique and discussion.

Space is limited.

OUR INSTRUCTOR

Kenta Watanabe is a next-generation Japanese indigo farmer-artisan—an Aishi—rooted in the living traditions of Tokushima. Thoughtful, generous, and deeply skilled, he carries forward an ancient practice grounded in soil, the natural seasons, and care.

In Tokushima, long celebrated for Japan Blue, indigo is grown from Persicaria tinctoria and transformed into sukumo through a slow, organic, seed-to-dye process. This knowledge—refined over centuries—once sustained a thriving regional trade. But with the arrival of synthetic indigo in the late 19th century, these labor-intensive, earth-based methods were largely set aside.

Today, only a handful of master Aishi remain to provide the sukumo for contemporary dyers and artists.
Kenta apprenticed under sixth-generation master Osamu Nii, entering a lineage of sukumo custodians. In an extraordinary act of trust, Nii granted him permission to share these once-guarded methods—opening a path for renewal, sustainability, and cultural continuity.

Kenta’s work is both preservation and evolution—grounded in nature and traditions yet simultaneously exploring exciting contemporary applications for his sukumo or Japan Blue.

For more information, please email
info[at]shibori.org