Tenugui Kanai Kogei

Established in 1958.
We perform natural dyeing including mud dyeing, a traditional technique handed down in Amami since ancient times, and share the rich nature with colors and wisdom of our ancestors through dyeing. In our workshop, we start with collecting techi wood to make dyes, and then we do natural dyeing to meet the needs from various fields from yarn and kasuri for traditional crafts, Oshima silk pongee. While dyeing the threads used for Oshima Tsumugi, the studio also dyes everyday objects and creates works and installations to appreciate the colors themselves.
Mud Dyeing〉
A traditional dyeing technique in which the trunks of the teechee tree native to Amami-Oshima are boiled into chips and used as a dye, dyeing the yarn 70-80 times, washing it in a mud field after each of the 20 dyeing cycles, and iron mordanting it.
(Teichiki)
An evergreen shrub belonging to the family Rosaceae and the genus Shirinbai, an essential plant for mud dyeing on Amami-Oshima.
Oshima tsumugi (Oshima silk)
is a traditional craft produced mainly on Amami Oshima, in the Amami Islands in southern Kagoshima Prefecture. It refers to plain-weave silk cloth woven by hand from hand-spun silk yarns dyed with mud, or Japanese clothes sewn from such silk cloth.