Ainu Pattern Imabari Towel Blanket kaparamip Blue and Navy

Nibutani, a village in Biratori Town on Hokkaido, is the center of living Ainu craft tradition in Japan. Kayano Kimihiro founded Nibutani Works there to create sustained work for Ainu artisans and keep the craft's inherited knowledge in active use. The kaparamip is a ceremonial Ainu garment, and the patterns drawn from it — spiraling morew-noka and thorned ay-us-noka forms — were not decorative in origin. Embroidered around collars, cuffs, and hems, they were worked as protection, the maker's prayer against harm entering through the openings of the body. Those same patterns appear here across the surface of an Imabari towel blanket, woven in Ehime Prefecture using the cotton production methods that have made Imabari the standard for quality textile manufacture in Japan. The blue and navy colorway renders the pattern as a tonal composition — the forms legible within the same field rather than contrasted against it. The result is an object that carries the weight of its source material while functioning as something made for daily use.