Amate

Nuno designers Reiko Sudo and Alfred Bimbaum were inspired by the amate paper made from tree bark by the Otomi peoples of central Mexico.  

They named the velvet and paper cloth they created in 2000 Amate.   

a grid of washi paper 

Textile samples like these were an important part of the exhibition Reiko Sudo + Nuno: textiles from Japan held last fall at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum in Almonte Ontario.  The samples covered a wall where participants were invited to PLEASE TOUCH.

Amate was my favourite of the variety of  NUNO cloths that dressed the 22 columns in the gallery.
It has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Historically, the Japanese word, nuno, meant cloth that was not made from silk, but over time, the word has evolved to define the unusual cloths that Reiko Sudo and her collaborators have created from natural and synthetic fibres over the last thirty years.

The wabi sabi beauty of the Norah Rosamond Hughes gallery itself, lovingly restored in the historic woolen textile factory, reminds us that everything changes and that there is beauty in age.

I've written more about this international exhibition on modernist aesthetic, here.