Junichi Arai has been called "the most creative weaver in the world." Throughout his long career as an artist and teacher (he calls himself a "textile engineer"), Arai has continuously pioneered a combination of the traditional and the futuristic. He worked...
[more]Junichi Arai has been called "the most creative weaver in the world." Throughout his long career as an artist and teacher (he calls himself a "textile engineer"), Arai has continuously pioneered a combination of the traditional and the futuristic. He worked closely with Issey Miyake in the '80s to create the beautifully light, ropy knits that brought Miyake and others to the forefront of fashion design.
This emergent age of Japanese textile design reveled in the beauty of the flaw: a Japanese craft tradition that shows an object was made by human hands. During this period, Arai transformed the intentional production of fabric flaws into a science. Junichi Arai was born in 1932 in Kiryu, Japan's center of traditional weaving. He represents the sixth generation in a kimono and obi fabric-weaving family.
While working with the family business, Arai applied his talents to the Puk Puppet Theater and set a precedent for work that would eventually take on its own organic and dramatic life. His textile work continuously reveals unexpected qualities, evoking waves, grass, hair, and skin. Some of Arai's knits look like spider webs patterned with snowflakes; others seem like multi-textural, monochrome patchwork quilts, in which threads of different weights and tensions create a gorgeous pucker and warp.
Arai began experimenting with new textile technologies very early in his career. Using traditional family methods of weaving gold and silver lame, he developed a revolutionary metal thread and weaving technique in 1955. He is credited with having introduced the computer into the craft tradition of textile design -- in the 1980s, he used computer technology to achieve the rough-hewn look of folk weaving. But Arai hasn't abandoned the hands-on approach; his company, Anthologie, employs local craftspeople of Kiryu to help create his work.
Here, Arai has sensitively anticipated the current interest in artisan-made (versus sweat-shop-produced) garments. Arai is a matured artist whose work is included in permanent collections of museums like the Victoria and Albert Museum. However, he still relishes innovation, especially in metal thread technology. Arai is the first to attempt weaving with "macrogauze," a revolutionary yarn that looks like silk but is actually made from stainless steel microfilaments.
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