Ricketts Indigo

Rowland and Chinami Ricketts run their indigo studio from a working farm in Bloomington, Indiana, where they grow their own organic indigo on six acres and process it themselves using traditional Japanese sukumo methods rather than buying in extracted pigment. Rowland trained as an indigo farmer and dyer during an apprenticeship in Tokushima, Japan, in the late 1990s before earning an MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2005; Chinami studied indigo dyeing in the same region and apprenticed under weaver Yumie Aoto, focusing on kasuri (ikat) weaving.

The couple keep the full cycle in-house — cultivating the plant, composting it down into sukumo, building and maintaining natural fermentation dye vats, and dyeing and weaving the finished cloth themselves. Rowland's work runs from woven coverlets and dyed textiles to noren partitions and large-scale gallery installations; Chinami weaves narrow-width kasuri-patterned yardage historically used for kimono and obi, alongside pieces the two make together.

They sell finished textiles and indigo seed through their own online shop, and their work has shown at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among other institutions — exhibition and retail sit alongside Rowland's teaching post at Indiana University's Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design.