Glow in the Dark. upcycled fabric meets 300 years of craft

Glow in the Dark fan — black bamboo ribs, close up

“Tokyo” furoshiki textile in blue, red, white and glow in the dark ink

The fabric

This fabric came from a long-time collaborator who closed their business a few years ago. When they shut their doors, the remaining printed cloth had nowhere to go, it would have been thrown away. In Japanese there's a word for that: mottainai, the feeling that something still useful shouldn't go to waste. So we took it.

The original fabric being screen-printed by hand, one colour at a time.

The same cloth by day and after dark, the phosphorescent windows glowing.

Founded
in 1718

We brought the fabric to Hakuchikudo, a fan workshop in Kyoto founded in 1718. They've been making fans by hand for over 300 years, and a single fan still takes around 80 steps to complete. In their hands, fabric that was headed for disposal became something worth keeping.

Hakuchikudo in Kyoto.

While the
fabric lasts

The design shows Tokyo at night, lit windows, a city that never quite sleeps. It's printed with phosphorescent ink, which absorbs light during the day and glows softly in the dark.

The factory that produced this ink has stopped making it, so we can only make these fans while our stock of the original fabric lasts. Each small batch uses up a little more of it. For this series, we chose bamboo frames in black.