Boro Threads Of Life. KateWhiteheadTextiles‬ © 2015 Kate

My love of Boro was the inspiration for my final collection at uni and continues to influence my textiles. I spent two happy hours at the Threads Of Life exhibition at Somerset House in April taking photographs and sketching. boro  translated to ‘rags’ in English, boro is the collective name for items – usually clothing and bed covers – made by the poor, rural population of Japan who could not afford to buy new when need required and had to literally make ends meet by piecing and patching discarded cotton onto existing sets, forming something slightly different each time they did so. Generations of Japanese families repaired and recycled fishermen’s jackets to futon covers, handing them down to the next and weaving their own sagas and stories through the threads.