Ashigara embroidery Kikuaki Ueda 3
- ━ Why did you think that you wanted to leave embroidery?
- That’s the end of the story, before that I started dealing in Kimono and waist bands, I renamed the company Ashigara.
The story started about 40 years earlier. In Japan we had Shinniku(cotton) which was added to a section of embroidery.
One piece of embroidery included 4 or 5 sections which made it solid. I felt I should preserve this style because I had never seen or heard of it outside Japan.
- ━ When trying to preserve the embroidery, all the processes such as the dyeing of sketches and thread also had to be preserved, how was the acquisition of the technology done?
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I understood the way of dyeing thread because I used to imitate it at my house.
But as an artist, you shouldn’t just use conventional techniques. It should be more accurate and delicate work.
So I gradually taught myself. It was hard because I also needed to make a living.
- ━ I think that the decision to live as an embroidery artist without being commercialized was not easy.
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From around 1950,the work started decreasing but my wife said " You have good hands so don't give it up! I worked
hard to live on”.
At that time, money wasn't so necessary for daily things because we had a field and I planted wild grass which I used for motif’s also I planted vegetables.
When there wasn’t any work, I sold Japanese yams wholesale to the market which I dug for in the mountains. Also I sold sweetfish to the fish market which I caught in rivers.
Someone told me that I had time to play but it wasn’t for fun. It was for our living.
I shot birds by air rifle and sold them in the 'yakitori' restaurants too.
It sounds like fun, but it was a very hard life.
- ━ When your weren’t famous, I think places for exhibiting your work were limited. What kind of activities did you do at that time?
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The society of handwork called ‘Odawara craft society’was established in Odawara in 1982.
However it was disassembled after 10 years, instead the Odawara chamber of commerce took over the role.
I voted at the meetings and for about 10 years I made presentations.
At the time, I named it Ashigara embroidery.
At the beginning, we were going to call it “Odawara” embroidery but my son (at the time he was a university student), my wife and I discussed the name because Odawara city was only one part of the embroidery industry, there were other areas, Ashigarakami District(a prosperous area of the industry), Naka District and Shimo District so we named it Ashigara embroidery.