Love Birds
14.02.2014 § Leave a comment
More Color Talk
02.12.2013 § Leave a comment
We are forecasting interior color trends again this season. There are always nuances of differences in the colors used in different sectors of interior design (homes, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, offices, etc). However, if you look at them over time, the overall color cast does show a consistency across the sectors. Colors were warm with a yellow cast during the 1990s; the 2000s were a transitional time; and now they have definitely cooled and have a red cast. During the 1980s, mauve and plum were big in the contract market, so we can see the pendulum has swung back to red again except now we are seeing different hues with a red cast. « Read the rest of this entry »
New England Morning
25.10.2013 § Leave a comment
I flew in to New York City by noon on Tuesday for ACT’s annual conference, which lasted til five, then went to a business dinner, and got up early the second morning for more ACT meetings til three when I immediately caught a train to Providence, RI. It was a hectic two days.
The second morning when I got up, it was already dawn, and as I looked out the window, the water and fall scenery drew me in and brought instant serenity to my mind. Seeing the quiet bay and horizontal road dotted with red foliage and a tall chimney, I said to myself, “Ah, this is New England.” A native New Englander might not have recognized why this was so New England, but as an outsider, I could pick up on the subtle, yet distinct differences that made this scenery unique.
 |
  |
The Magic of Color
04.09.2013 § Leave a comment
Last weekend I burned my peanut soup so badly that I had to open all the doors and windows in the house to exhaust the toxic air. With everything open, a big, long, black bug flew into the kitchen during dinner. It bumped its body against all the windows surrounding us in the dining area. I could not tell what kind of bug it was; the closest I can describe is a huge winged ant. It was too slender to be a cicada or a beetle yet too long and large for a wasp or a firefly. I had a sense of creepiness while I watched the bug with its two long tails dangling, furiously flying over the dining area. We finally opened a screen-less window to allow its escape—or our escape I should say. « Read the rest of this entry »
Color Combo
18.03.2013 § Leave a comment
A color combination I am working on these days. After more than 10 years in vogue for interiors, it is not a new color, but it seems to persist, showing up with different twists from era to era. I am still fond of this morning blue with cream.
Ming Red
15.02.2013 § 2 Comments
I bought this antique lacquer in a small antique store for china and lacquer ware in Kyoto. The store was so small, the aisles so narrow that I felt like I was knocking things off the shelf with every turn or movement. Especially with bulky coats, etc. Anyway, this lacquer ware caught my eye. The color has such elegance and depth that a plastic imitation cannot reproduce.
I used to call this orangish red color “Ming red,” meaning the red color of the Ming Dynasty red lacquer. Some of the rare Song Dynasty lacquer ware I have seen in museums may not look that different to an untrained eye, but their colors are even more elegant and have more depth. The Song Dynasty was about 1000 years ago while the Ming Dynasty existed during the 1500’s. Is it because the older an object becomes, the more patina it develops? Or that the ancient artists had better taste? It is neither. It is because … please guess.
Color Know How
05.12.2012 § Leave a comment
To be able to enjoy life is a great blessing, but to take on a challenge is more rewarding. It is both the painful process of overcoming the difficulty and the thrill of attaining the goal, the mixture of these two extremes that makes life more inspiring and meaningful. I suppose that is why I do what I do. In developing the Brentano line, I am constantly challenging the status quo and searching for new technology, new color sense and new points of view.
Making colors for natural fibers such as cotton, rayon, wool—the process is a sheer pleasure. They each have a noble characteristic when taking dyes. When finalizing the color selections for a pattern with a natural fiber, we are torn between so many good colors that exquisite colors often get left out.
Kale for Color Sense
31.07.2012 § Leave a comment
When my children were learning violin during their youth, they got into it pretty competitively. I was a bit worried when they went to sporting events that they would hurt their hands and not be able to practice violin for a long time or that they would hurt themselves in such a way that they would lose their fingers’ sensitivity and would not be able to play as well.
Likewise, I realized that I rely on my eyes to make my living. To keep my eyes healthy and maintain good color sense is an important thing. « Read the rest of this entry »
Story of the Color Sky
29.06.2012 § Leave a comment
The light blue is “Sky.”
One of the subconscious reasons I started to study Japanese was to be able to read Japanese textile-related articles. The Japanese people’s ability to maintain a catalogue of their traditional color names throughout history with actual colors samples is most amazing to me. I brought back five of these kinds of books with me from Japan. My fever of studying color names was reignited when I purchased a Japanese-English dictionary last year at the Mizuwa Marketplace bookstore in Arlington Heights. At the front, there are about five pages of color blocks with name identifications. I was in awe to see that a common little dictionary would have such a professional level of color work. « Read the rest of this entry »
My Interest in Chinese Historical Textiles
21.06.2012 § Leave a comment
About 25 years ago, before I started Brentano, I was studying the vegetable dye color names of ancient China. This interest was first initiated by the incredible color descriptions in a classical Chinese novel depicting the lives of the aristocracy. I wrote a lyrical prose piece about “color names in literature” that was published in a Chinese publication and have been hooked on the subject ever since.
I wrote to a textile historian once who was a professor at the then Hwa Tung Textile Academy in Shanghai. To my surprise, he wrote me back and awarded me with many texts with old Chinese weaving references and some of their vegetable-dyed scarf samples to identify the names of the dyes that I had questioned him about in my letter—such as Su Fong, Madder and Gardenia, etc. Some of those color names were among the early product color names I used when the color inspiration derived from this lineage.
These two scarves are dyed with Shiso Leaf (lavender), Gardenia (yellow), and Su Fang Wood (red). My notes about the dyes are in pencil.
« Read the rest of this entry »
Woven-Words 