The Ethos of SAORI Weaving - Key Ideas and Themes

October 12, 2023

I really wanted to get closer to the heart of the ethos of SAORI weaving and to understand more about the thinking of SAORI founder Misao Jo. This seemed to leave me no option but to purchase the official handbook, SAORI Self-Innovation Through Free Weaving by Misao Jo & Kenzo Jo . The book is a bit expensive and not that easy to get hold of except through registered Saori studios, however it is very extensive and contains all the vital information you could need as a serious Saori weaver.

It’s not my intention to write a book review here, but rather to pull out and share a summary of key themes and ideas that interest me about the ethos of Saori. The majority of this comes from the parts of the book written by Misao in 1977, 1989 and republished in 2000. The edition I'm reading from was first published in 2012 and printed in 2021. Misao’s writings were first published in Japanese and have been translated into English with the first English edition published in 2001. I’m mentioning this because it may affect the interpretation of certain ideas and language.

For me, two very significant themes came through which are the idea of self-expression being key to identifying and developing our ‘true-selves’ and the idea of ‘Kansei’ which refers to an innate sense of intuitive beauty inherent in everyone. These are two themes I very much want to develop further in my own work.

Other themes emerged which in no particular order, I categorised as, Humans Vs Machines, Human Nature, Unconventional Thinking, Failure and ‘Mistakes’, The Innocent Mind, Self-Expression in the Creative Process and The True-Self, Intuition, Present moment, Process over Product, Spirituality, Developing Creativity Vs Teaching and The Path I (Misao) Followed. Some of these are very strong themes in Saori, some I’ve picked out in a search to make links between Saori and my ideas around intuition in the creative process. These ideas have been clarified recently by reading the article Understanding creative intuition by Theresa Jane Hardman. I intend to compare these ideas in more depth in the future but not today!

Of course SAORI has its key statements and themes expressed in it’s four slogans

Four Slogans of SAORI (1975) p142

Consider the difference between a machine and a human being
Be bold and adventurous
Look out through eyes that shine
Inspire one another, and everyone in the group.

These are not my main focus in writing this, but I think it is important to acknowledge them and also that by examining Saori ethos in more depth, to see how these slogans emerged.

SAORI Ideas and Themes

Humans Vs Machines

This is a key theme in Saori and also relates to the first of the four Slogans. Misao was very concerned with the comparison between what could be produced by machine and an industrialised weaving process in comparison to what individuals could produce in a hand weaving process.

Intuitive Threads - Thoughts on my Creative Process

August 14, 2023

Here is an update on how my weaving for my Intuitive Threads project has been progressing. Since my first piece that I wrote about in my last blog, I’ve woven three more pieces and continued to try out techniques, materials and colours. I’m not going to focus on the technical stuff in this post, I want to talk about the emotional and mental aspects of the creative process that have come up for me recently.

DIFFICULT SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH WOVEN PIECES

In my last blog I mentioned something I referred to as ‘the difficult second album’, that musicians often suffer with when under pressure to follow up the initial successful album. Can they recreate the conditions and the magic that made the first one successful? Can they perform under the pressure that wasn’t there when they were still unknown and had less external pressures on them to succeed?

Well now I’ve put it like that, I feel like I’m over exaggerating my weaving situation here, but certainly I felt something similar, if on a smaller stakes scale. I was really pleased with the first woven piece I created on my Saori loom. I felt free to experiment and follow through with the process I found myself in and was pleasantly surprised with the result. When it came to the second piece, I felt a pressure, albeit an internal one, to recreate or exceed that original success. So how would I do that? Well by using similar materials, yarns and techniques as before and adding additional techniques I’d learned from the workshops with Amanda at Beautiful Cloth Saori Studio

MOVING THROUGH DISCOMFORT

At first, weaving this second piece felt really uncomfortable. Not surprising considering the pressure I was putting on myself to produce something ‘really good’. I realised I had a background belief that I needed to create a coherent collection. Perhaps this is because in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking I’d like to display these works as an exhibition at some point in the future or it could come from my original textile design training. Maybe it also relates to an underlying belief that I need to have a recognisable style as an artist. A recogonisable style or voice may be something that emerges with time, but it's unreasonable to expect it to show up on my second piece on the loom. Other feelings of discomfort that arose during the second and third pieces were dislike, boredom and impatience. Which brings me to…

STAGES OF PROCESS

I realised I hadn’t been allowing for the different stages and phases of the creative process. After all, we don't all feel the same everyday. There are ebbs and flows; some days we are full of creative intention, inspiration and energy and others, we feel tired or uninspired.

3rd SAORI Workshop - Intuitive Threads

April 26, 2023

I attended my 3rd SAORI weaving workshop on Friday 21st March with Amanda Edney of Beautiful Cloth SAORI Studio. This is part of my Intuitive Threads project exploring the nature of intuition in creativity through Saori and intuitive weaving methods. After attending two previous workshops, I was starting to feel more at home at the village hall at Napton, so when I arrived 10 minutes late, I apologised, made myself coffee and helped myself to biscuits. Part of my excuse for being late was I had to wait for the bin lorry to leave the narrow road to the village hall at Napton, the same thing happened the last time though so ideally I’d have been even earlier arriving. Anyway this actually turned out quite well as the three other people in the workshop were beginners taking their first Saori class, and it had given Amanda time to go through the introduction with them and get them set up to start weaving. After my coffee Amanda suggested I get together my yarns and wind bobbins to use before I started weaving. I chose bright coloured yarns this time, yellow, orange, pink, blue and green. This is quite a contrast to last time when I chose white and neutral colour yarns.

I had already decided before the workshop that I wanted to try the techniques Amanda had shown me at the last weaving day. These were Sakiori, weaving with yarns made from strips of fabric, and extra threads in the warp to add colour and interest. Before the workshop I had gone through my collection of fabrics at home and put together a collection of materials to bring with me. Perhaps most people don’t have a large box of assorted fabrics and materials hidden in a cupboard, but it turns out that I do, even if I’d forgotten about it for a long time. Most of the material came from my grandmother, after she died in 2006, I inherited most of her fabric collection. She had been a dress maker who made wedding and bridesmaid dresses as well as clothes for herself and the family in her younger years. When I was a young child, she would make coordinating outfits for me and my younger brother and sister. Some of these fabrics brought back memories of clothes she had made and times in my childhood. I found a brightly coloured graffiti style design that she had made my younger brother a pair of Bermuda shorts in, I seem to remember this being quite the thing in 1980s fashion. I’ve always quite liked the bright luminous neon colours of this fabric so I decided to use it in my weaving.

What is Intuitive Weaving?

April 17, 2023

My original aim for the Intuitive Threads project was to explore both SAORI weaving and Intuitive weaving. The purpose of this project is to allow for exploration and expansion of ideas. It's open ended with loosely defined outcomes. Having said that, sometimes it's helpful to have definitives and definitions. To close down the parameters a little and close in on what's most relevant with some focus. So that you know what you're doing, where you're heading, what you're looking at. I wanted to see if there was a definition of 'Intuitive weaving'. There are 1,902 entries with the hashtag #intuitiveweaving on Instagram as of today (17th April 2023), so it must be a thing!

Maybe not surprisingly, considering the multiple meanings the words intuition and intuitive can have, I've struggled to find a universal definition. The term seems to have different meanings and purposes for different people and weavers. Maybe an Internet search is not the most comprehensive way to explore this but that's where I started. A bonus of this approach was that I discovered some really interesting and inspiring weavers and textile artists that I wasn’t aware of before. People from around the world who have created businesses and workshops and put together ideas in ways that show something out of the ordinary can work. I’ve also come across some really interesting and perspective expanding pieces of writing.

Returning to attempting to define the term ‘Intuitive weaving’, some common themes came up in my research,

Spirituality - weaving as spiritual practice, and/or tradition.
Ancient origins - weaving as an ancient craft
Archetype - weaver/weaving archetype - weaving as creation/creating
Ritual - weaving to create or as ritual
Self-expression - as a vehicle for self-expression and creativity
Subconscious - accessing and expressing the subconscious
Process over outcome - intuition is connected to in the creative process
Instinct over intellect - (favouring creativity over logic or right brain over left brain)
Boundaries - weaving process providing structure for creative practice and intuition
Flow - weaving as a physical practice that allows for a state of ‘flow’ to be experienced
Mindfulness and Meditation - similar to flow, a mindful process
Spontaneity - a creative process/way of working without or with minimal pre-planning
Individuality - creating one off individual work
Non-standard materials - using natural, found, collected or recycled materials

Technology - Intuitive meaning easy to use and understand computerised looms for industry (the interloper)

1st Saori Workshop - Intuitive Threads

March 16, 2023

SAORI WORKSHOP WITH BEAUTIFUL CLOTH SAORI STUDIO - 11TH MARCH

I attended my first Saori Weaving workshop with Amanda Edney from Beautiful Cloth Saori Studio on Saturday. There were only 4 of us in the class so it was almost like having individual tuition. It was the first time any of us had tried Saori so we were all beginners.

The day was about having a go at using the looms, learning and trying out techniques and having a piece of weaving to take away at the end of the day. Amanda shared more about the background to Saori and her own journey to finding Saori and training at the headquarters in Japan. She talked about the process of becoming an authorised studio and how this relates to relationship building in Japanese culture. Amanda also shared with us her collection of Saori pattern books for making garments out of Saori woven cloth. This is something I hadn’t thought about before but it might be an area I choose to explore later.

What I noticed about Saori is although there may be ‘no rules’, there are definitely guidelines for the process and right ways to do things. Some of these being slightly different from the ways I have always done them as a weaver, so in a way I was having to unlearn ‘bad habits’. This includes weaving the start and end of warp yarns into the middle of the cloth so they make a tidy edge and winding yarn onto a bobbin in a cross formation; I never knew that was the best way to do it.

The Saori looms are different from any loom I’ve used before so there are things to learn about the way they work. They are something of a revelation because they are designed around the weaver to be easy to use. Notable differences are a built-in

Saori Research - Intuitive Threads

March 8, 2023

Intuitive Threads - an exploration of the nature and role of intuition in the creative process through Saori and intuitive approaches to weaving.

Soari weaving is the core element of my Intuitive Threads research and development project. In my first blog post for this project, I wanted to look at and collate some information about what Saori weaving is and to identify aspects that interest me about its approach and ethos. This is a starting point for me to gather information on the broader context of Saori before getting started on experiencing it practically through the workshops I will be attending with Amanda Edney at Beautiful Cloth Saori Studio.

WHAT IS SAORI WEAVING?

Saori is a type of weaving that originated in Japan in the 1960s. It was founded by Miaso Jo and developed further by her son Kenzo Jo. The story is that Miaso Jo was weaving an Obi (belt) and noticed a flaw in the weaving. She liked the design that it made but discovered it would be considered as flawed by manufacturers who will only accept a ‘perfect’ cloth.