What KAMOI Kakoshi is known for

Kamoi Kakoshi has made adhesive tape in Okayama since 1923, starting with flypaper and moving to industrial masking tape. The mt line began when three women asked the factory for masking tape in colour. The first run used twenty traditional Japanese colours, and the catalogue has since passed a thousand designs on washi paper. The mt lab. shop in Osaka sits at Nakatsu in Kita ward.

Kamoi Kakoshi was founded in Okayama in 1923 and began by making flypaper. The company moved into industrial and painting masking tapes and ran for decades as a factory devoted to them. The mt line started with a book. Three women who had fallen for masking tape made a small volume of it, and their request for colourful tapes led the factory to develop mt. The first run used twenty traditional Japanese colours. Later tapes took up the wamon patterns, among them hemp leaf, twisted plum, hanabishi, kumikikkou. The catalogue has since passed a thousand separate designs. The paper is washi, thin enough to tear by hand and strong enough not to split, with an adhesive that lifts without residue. Printing is the other half of the work. The factory has taken on flocking, screen printing, foil stamping, pearl inks, fluorescent inks, double-sided printing, and has added wax paper, perforation, blackboard finishes. Collaborations run to illustrators, painters, picture-book makers, and to the textile house mina perhonen. The tapes and the exhibitions built from them have collected a Good Design Award, D and AD pencils and a Cannes Lions gold. The mt lab. shop in Osaka stands at Nakatsu in Kita ward. The factory tour at Kurashiki draws about fourteen thousand visitors each year.