HOLOHOLO biyori
HOLOHOLO biyori is a coffee bean bag brand run by Yuki Honma. All of her work is one and only. She carefully handles the material and her design brings out the best in the material. I wanted to know how she got into coffee bean bags, her thoughts on upcycling and her life around it.
Life in Nashville
She started off with telling me about her experience in Nashville, Tennessee. The reason for her move was her husband’s work. She had never lived abroad, didn’t speak English too well, and she was 37 years old at that time. At the time she was running her own brand called Holoholobiyori and selling dog clothing. But she had to leave the business because her US visa did not allow her to work. “So I went to the US just as a wife of an expatriate employee with no other labels.” she says.
When she knew that she was moving to Nashville, the first thing she thought she needed to get was a driving licence. So she managed to get one just before she left for the US. For her, the first year was pretty tough.
“I was really shy about even saying “hello” in English.”
But she pulled herself together and started learning English, first online with a Japanese speaking teacher but it didn’t go so well. So then, she decided to take lessons with locals face to face. Though she found the teacher, It was a huge challenge for her at that time. Not only was she a beginner driver in a foreign country and needed to travel about an hour into a busy downtown, but also, she was an absolute beginner English learner trying to learn the language from a native speaker. However, it turns out that the challenging situation got her out of her insecurity. She went everywhere on her own or with her American friends but never with Japanese people so she soaked herself in a English speaking environment completely.
“It would have been such a waste if I let myself be drowned in my insecurity and went back to Japan empty handed after three years I thought.”
It was during her second year in the US, when she met coffee bean sacks. Because she is a craftsman she wanted to connect with other makers in the US. When she started researching about makers in the US she found a distinctive difference between herself and the US makers. When she was in Japan, even though she had her own business, she could not get rid of the idea that she was a housewife who makes and sells things on the side and probably it was the same in the eyes of the public. Whereas, in the US, many independent makers are seen as entrepreneurs and not just wives with hobbies. She was fascinated with the idea and started exploring craft markets and flea markets.
Rosco and Pam
She met Rosco and Pam at a flea market. Though there were many vendors, Rosco and Pam’s vendor caught her eye especially because they had a large space filled only with a variety of coffee bean sacks and potato sacks. She was fascinated by the variation as it is rare to see so much of them at once in Japan. After that she kept going back to the flea market and thinking she would have loved to have a bag made of those sacks. Although she was a little concerned with the hygiene of the sacks, she decided to buy some of them and started to wash them in her extra bathroom. Apparently, they needed a week of deep cleaning and at one point she even doubted that maybe it was impossible to be completely cleaned and reuse them.
However, as she washed the sacks, she started to fall in love with them. She loved how each sack is unique in colour, condition and quality of the print.
“It may be considered as a negative aspect, but to me it was interesting. Its inconsistency really got me.”
Also the fact that the coffee bean sacks are made of jute which is a biodegradable eco-friendly material made her interested in the material even more.
Turn around negative aspect over time
Although jute has its pros as mentioned above, it has a few negative aspects when using it as an apparel material. It has a natural odor and harsh surface because of the vigorous fibres.
When she got back to Japan, she started sewing the sacks she brought back from the US and made a bag out of them. After several times of use, she noticed a change in the surface texture of the bag. The fibres which had been sticking out of the surface began to be rubbed off and leaving the surface soft and smooth and the prints on the bag became more vibrant.
If I were her, I would have probably given up on the second day of deep cleaning because the idea of washing hundreds of sacks for weeks sounds unattainable to me. But unlike me, better she got to know the material and spent time with it, greater her love towards the coffee bean sacks became.
“I don’t know what possessed me but what I know is that I’m completely in love with it!”
Avant-garde designs
Although she wasn’t an expert on coffee nor an environmentalist, she loved textiles.
“If I were a coffee farmer, I could have simply stamped my name on a sack and sent it off instead of printing a fancy design”
That was something I was also curious about. According to a cafe owner she collaborated with in Kanazawa, in general, people who live in areas where coffee beans are grown often live off of the coffee bean farming business solely. It could be run by a family or a group of local farmers and they need to survive the competition to make profit and feed their families.
“If those funky designs are the embodiment of their passion, love and goodwill, it makes me want to make use of them even more. It’s kind of similar to fashion isn’t it? Sure, the coffee beans are to be consumed but it is as if the farmers are dressing up their beloved coffee beans so that they are picked by the buyers and to be loved by many of us.”
Let’s look into details
I also love how Honma treats damaged parts on the sacks. Obviously the main purpose of the coffee bean sacks are to protect the beans, thus the sacks are often damaged during the transportation and leave holes or scraped parts. But when she discovered darning technique, she instantly thought of using it to mend the damaged parts. Though darning usually requires a delicate technique, “it wasn’t necessary for applying darning on the fabric made of jute.” says Honma.
Giving another life
“… these coffee bean sacks have been all dressed up beautifully, have done their part and now they are about to be thrown away. Perhaps it’s only for my own pleasure but I just want to give them another life as bags so that they can shine again and reach out to many more people.”
As I was listening to her I was thinking I really want people to acknowledge her passion towards coffee bean bags. It striked me straight away that I felt like I had touched the heart of a true artisan who sits contemplating the story of the material someone else made before she creates her work with it. This act is unique to all the artisans I have been talking to but it reminded me this was and still is the spirit I hope to circulate through Dear People on Earth,.
She also told me about her thoughts on including pieces of leather in her work;
“I am not against leather artisans. I just think it would be nice if someone could make use of the leftover leather.”
If you look at her work, some of them have leather pieces on the bottom corners of the bags to protect them from being worned out. She is aware that some people are against using animal products but she is also aware that some of the leather used by artisans are the byproduct of the meat industry and if the leather was not used for other purposes, it would be discarded as waste.
It’s the same with coffee bean sacks she says. “For cafes and coffee brewers, coffee beans are the material” and the coffee bean sacks are their waste. Hence, when she goes up to them and asks for the sacks, they usually say “yes yes, please use it!” and they even appreciate her for making good use of them.
“It seems that they also like the designs and they are reluctant to put them into the bins. So I think it’s best if the sacks are reused somehow which creates a sustainable product lifecycle.”
There are people who want to do something about the waste they produce but don’t know what to do or where to start. “There may be big recycling companies saving tons of waste but what I can do is to save waste those big companies cannot save even if it’s just a small amount.” she says.
The material she uses for the back side of bags is fabric scraps she collected in the US. She uses it instead of jute because jute may leave some fibers on clothes and can make a little mess and some people do not like that. She told me she likes fabrics produced in the US because of the vivid colours and bold patterns. She finds the fabrics adorable but sometimes difficult to use when looking at it by the yard. However, “by looking at it piece by piece, it starts to look even more appealing to me” she says. I believe her pure interest in those fabrics is inevitably shown in her work which then attracts people.
What she’s doing is upcycling but as you can see by now, that’s not her initial motive for creating the work. What she loves doing happens to be upcycling and friendly to the environment. At times she feels that she is obliged to hashtag “upcycling” in her instagram posts because of the social phenomenon. It is not her style to disparage an idea in order to induce another, for instance, “upcycling”. It seems that she is still exploring her opinion towards this tricky area of topic. But what I can say is that as long as she reminds herself how she got into coffee bean sacks and be true to her passion, she will continue to create work that is relevant to the times.
“Aterier Omoi” − アトリエ想木 –
Next step in her career is to have her own studio just outside of Tokyo, where people can access easily from the city centre. She wants to make the studio a healing place where people can rest and retreat themselves.
Honma and her husband together came up with the name of the studio. They thought it would be nice to have a place where they can take a breath at the end of a long day. Honma told me that the name “Omoi” (in English, usually a caring feeling towards another soul) is inspired by mistletoe. She says “mistletoes choose a host tree to “parasitize” but co-live with the host tree and sometimes the mistletoes even help them photosynthesize.” We call the host trees Yadorigi in Japanese. “… to me, it feels just like how we collaborate with others for work. Though we are all responsible for our own tasks, everyone’s having each other’s backs.” she continued.
It has been too long since we last spoke so by the time this article is published, she may have found the right atelier already. She said she wants to keep the atterier an open studio.
I have to say it has been a pleasure listening to her story with the coffee bean sacks. Her story reminded me of how indispensable it is to follow your instinct and continue to be curious about it. I am looking forward to visiting her atelier someday and experiencing her “Omoi”.
For HOLOHOLO biyori’s updates, visit: https://linktr.ee/holoholobiyori
