We have new patchwork pieces for sale in our shops!
We have a piece in the Hmong Room in our villa and guests are constantly asking if we sell them. So.. we went through our Hmong textiles and have made a few special patchwork pieces to sell! They are all from antique Hmong costumes and are fun and wild colors.
Hmong Room at the Villa
Erin, our sales manager, parents came to visit last week! It was great to meet them. They stayed at the villa for a few nights and of course they shopped!
Here is her mom with our sales staff; Chay, Mab and Jen.
Seeing what is out drying in the wind at the center is the best part of the day.
Scenes from today shows indigo shibori shawls.. in the softest silk.
Very excited to get these into the stores and on the webshop next week!
Penelope”, an exhibition by Tatiana Blass. Borrowing its name from the Greek myth, “Penelope” it is a tribute to the power of love and the praxis of weaving.
Built to fill the Chapel of Morumbi in São Paulo, Blass has displayed a large pedal-loom at the altar. Attached is a intricately woven, red carpet that extends to the courtyard; red, to signify both power and nobility, as recounted in Greek legend.Her installation connects the internal and external worlds of belief through a web of tangled wool, yet it is unclear whether the carpet is in the process of being woven or unraveled (as goes the tale of Penelope).On the opposite side of the loom, the threads run wildly; a matrix of red yarn envelops the exterior gardens, further confounding our perception of space and place. Merging the religious with the architectural and the enigmatic, Blass is deeply interested in “the abstract.” She conceals as much as she reveals, blending complex stories with elaborate textile creations. Via Trend Tablet.
Scenes from Hmong New Year this year. A great week long celebration of everything Hmong.
The Luang Prabang Film Festival is going on right now! It is one of our favorite times of the year because we get to watch movies on a big screen, outside! It’s as good, if not better than going to the drive in. All the films celebrate South East Asian Cinema. To see the talent of film from all over the region is so great. The opening party on Saturday night was held at the French Cultural Center and was a little too much fun. Lots of nibbles from some of the great hotels and restaurants in town, Sangria, plenty of Beer Lao and people from all over the world made the party a blast.
The Festival opened with the movie On Safer Ground, which is the story of one British man, Gareth Carter, visiting and meeting a Laos’ football team and bringing them to Sweden for the Gothia Cup. The whole team attended the party and it was so special to meet them.. and celebrate their terrific journey.
Britt Browne is one of my friends who is a constant source of inspiration.
While living in Los Angeles we spent days and nights sharing ideas, creating little worlds and have found ourselves saying the same things at the same time quite often! She is someone who makes you smile, think and laugh no matter what. She has many different talents and can often be found behind her Chandler & Price Letterpress.
Her love for all things indigo started almost 10 years ago. Her love for indigo is what made me want to learn more about natural dyes and she was one of the biggest supporters of me moving to Laos and working here at Ock Pop Tok.
If you are in the Los Angeles area, and want to learn more about indigo, see indigo, buy an indigo plant and make your own indigo dye.. She is your girl! You can check out her Indigo Blog HERE. or her current work HERE. ——- Erin ❤
Ock Pop Tok and a few new friends from Santa Fe, New Mexico, took off into the misty mountains of northern Laos last weekend. Way up the Nam Ou River in northern Luang Prabang Province is a village that we have been to before. This village is so beautiful and natural and is home to indigo masters.
Using the variety Indigofera Strobilanthes Cusia, the masters soak the leaves for 3-4 days. “Now with the weather so cold the process takes longer and the foam isn’t as blue as in the summer months”, one master dyer told us. A bamboo basket is used to oxidize the solution and we were lucky to see the color transform in front of our eyes.. within minutes a rich vibrant blue started to appear.
