秋豐，冬眠 Autumn Abundance, Winter Rest (2024)

Sizes variable
Cotton, linen
2024

Exhibitions: 秋豐，冬眠 Autumn Abundance, Winter Rest, ICHA Tea, Toronto, ON
October 5 – November 9, 2024

For this collection of tea textiles, I wanted to create work that opposed the colourful, textured work I created for Spring Colours – Summer Hues. 

Considering the first half of the theme, Autumn Abundance, I wove four tea mats using a palette of naturally dyed colours in thin, delicate cotton and linen. I had in mind crispy brown leaves and the fading black-eyed susans — the abundance of one season’s colour fading into the next. 

Natural dyes create a beautiful warm, vegetal palette that speaks to the browns, golds, orange and rust of autumn. I used flowers such as marigolds, food waste like onion skins, and “weeds” like dandelions to dye the yarn for these mats. As they are used in your tea practice, the colours may shift, fade, or change slightly, another gentle reminder to enjoy autumn’s abundance while it lasts. 

For Winter Rest, I created ten tea cloths using a lace weaving technique, thinking of the furrows and drifts of snow that will form in a few short months. There are many types of snow, but I tried to mimic my favourite type with these cloths: thin, slightly transparent, with marks from wind and plants. Just as snow looks white from a distance but contains many colours up close, I used a palette of natural and bleached “white” yarns for the tea cloths.

This exhibition was a collaboration with ceramicist Helen Kong of Secret Teatime.