Its Autumn and getting close to Winter.
The weather is splendid and sometimes it can be unpredictable too.
I took the time to get myself lost in the middle of the city and its nice to play tourist sometimes.
But being tourist all the time can also means you are not settle.
Norwich is the city Norfolk, somewhere North East of London and its 5 hours bus from Heathrow.
It is considered as 'the happiest city to work' in the UK voted by The Guardian.
The first few things i managed to discover are the pre-historic buildings located scattered around the city. Norwich Castle, Cathedral, the old victorian house, as well as Georgian buildings.
The landscape during Autum is beautiful and I managed to capture some of interesting element that could be possible use for natural dye making soon!
There's also interesting river called the Wensum River which has quite a lot of interesting weed and algae in the river where theres potential to explore and do some pigment extraction from it.
While walking down to the city, theres also interesting shops and second hand item i really love. I usually dont go to big brand shops instead i prefer local and random stuff from Salvation Army, charity shops, and emporium! The KOBO A-B was one of the shop that sell Japanese textile and Indigo dye products. As I entered the shops, i was greeted by one Japanese lady, name Hiroko. We talked and discuss about few things especially the japanese blue!. She was surprised i knew quite a lot about the magic blue dye. Interestingly, she told me I have to pay a visit to the Norwich Catheral. Hiroki and her partner share their love and passion about japanese textile and they exhibited an array of textile collections from the Edo period of Japan called 'Boro The Kobo A-B Collection'.
The private collection from Hiroko and Nigel were mostly Boro textiles. Boro in Japanese means
old and tattered or commonly now known as mending textile. These interesting collection consist of
Noragi jacket or the workers jacket age more than 200 years old.
Its interesting how the garment are being hand over from one generation to another and its being worn
by the family members from grandmother down to their grandchildren or even longer than that.
These concept is a pure sustainable approach where the textile are being mend and overlapped with multiple fabric and re-stitch over and over again. The indigo blue on the fabric give a strong character to each piece and the shades of Japanese indigo blue never fail to awe me all the time.
What a great start for DuniaMotif in Norwich! Will keep you posted and share our love on natural dye and anything related in between!
Cheers!