MEMORY ON CLOTH - SHIBORI NOW

Shibori is infinitely more than the tie-dye that became well known in the late 1960s. Shaped-resist dyeing techniques have been done for centuries in every corner of the world. Yet more than half of the known techniques-in which cloth is in some way tied, clamped, folded, or held back during dyeing, to keep some areas from taking color - originated in Japan. Shibori can be used not only to create patterns on cloth but to turn fabric from a two-dimensional into a three-dimensional object. The word is used here to refer to any process that leaves a "memory on cloth" -a permanent record, whether of patterning or texture, of the particular forms of resist done.