Craft Portrait: Dorozome is a project by designers Satomi Minoshima and Pauline Agustoni.

The duo teamed up with craftsman Yukihito Kanai and Dorozome, artisans from dyeing workshop Kanai Kougei, to develop a textile installation that displays the process movements and colours of Dorozome, a traditional Japanese craft in which threads are repeatedly dyed in wood bark and mud until they reach a deep black colour.

Enriched by a three-week research trip to the island of Amami Oshima, the duo developed a scenography that expresses the craft’s repetitive nature and unique aesthetics. With their installation and publication introducing eleven interviews of Dorozome artisans, they aim to communicate about crafts in a way that does not nurture exoticism or nostalgia but highlights Dorozome’s profound relationship with its environment and culture. As designers, they believe in the alternative, counter-cultural, almost rebel potential of crafts to resist current, damaging material production systems.