The Japanese Art of Silk Marbling Used by Hermès

Name: The Japanese Art of Silk Marbling Used by Hermès
Uploaded: 2025-06-13T06:16:49.238Z
Duration: 7 min 30 s
Channel: Japanese Craft Traditions

Japanese Craft Traditions

1 Video View·Jun 13, 2025

Droplets, waves, and mountains—the etchings held prisoner in blocks of stone—served as inspiration for the marbled paper crafted by Japanese master bookbinders.

While inkjet printing has replicated these effects on fabric, it has never matched the delicacy and radiance of the original patterns, rediscovered by Hermès in an old album from the archives of its Lyon textile division.

After years of research, the traditional technique of silk marbling—using a compressed, through-colored starch paste—was revived in Kyoto. Today, the Nose family preserves this rare and exquisite craft.

Directed by Frédéric Laffont.

He doesn't have a drawing of how to do it. It's all in his head. My older brother, Moriyoshi, is the only craftsman in the world. When I was four, in 1963, my father was sent from the company to Germany to introduce this technology. I thought it was surprisingly fast to grow up right after starting a business and then get tired of it. There were fewer and fewer employees. I lost my husband. In the end, it was just my older brother and my sister. Everyone has a different opinion. I spent 40 years thinking, maybe I don't need it, or maybe I have to leave it. I spent 40 years thinking, I knew then that if I quit, my husband would die. We don't know how this album got to us. These fabrics were published in the 1930s, 1940s and 1960s. We have incredible qualities of color, finesse and detail. These are things we don't know how to do with any technique. Today, it's no longer possible. We arrived here in Kyoto. All of a sudden, it's a 60-year return, with a technique that we thought we had forgotten. It took us 10 years to find these people. I think Miyoshi has it all in his head. He knows that when he does this gesture, it will give such a result. While we are around him, we look, but we don't know. I think his expertise is an incredible skill. For us, it's magic. There is no other word, I don't know. Everyone is doing it. When you have a design that is close to a pattern, it doesn't matter what technique you use, it makes me the happiest. We have been working here for almost two and a half years, and we are currently in the middle of production for the first project. Preserving this type of expertise in the world's heritage is such an inestimable value that it was out of the question to counteract the technique with another current technique, which would be the inkwell, because we wouldn't have the same result. The square as it is now wouldn't exist today. Ever since my grandfather brought it home, in the past, things that were more conventional and rough techniques have been promoted by layer upon layer. I want to challenge myself more and more to try new things and reach the point where I can break the shell.