The Language of Cloth

I'm so excited about his time of year, because this is when my friend Daniel Gundlach has his annual Asian Textiles sale!

the flowers, birds, sea-life, and the unusual color of this Cirebon sarung, reminds me of the work of Ernst Haeckel.

Daniel is a talented painter with whom I worked back in my salad days, and he now spends 6 months or more every year traveling in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, using his great eye for color and form to collect and design textiles. His company, The Language of Cloth, assists communities in reviving the teaching and making of their local traditional arts while giving them a contemporary spin.

This year's show concentrates on the batik work of Central Java. All of these pieces are one-of-a-kind, hand-made, and spectacular. Many museum-quality contemporary works, as well as antique and tribal pieces are available, and there is a good assortment of scarves and smaller items that make wondrous and affordable gifts as well.

Yes it sounds hippie-dippie, and maybe it is, but you can do some very cool decorating and fashion-ating with this stuff.

My own batik collection is growing! clockwise from top: the red batik cotton tuli "mega mendung" (rain cloud) pattern is destined to become a new window shade; that splendid multicolored scarf I've been wearing all year is a Batak tribal pattern; cotton Cirebon-style sarung super cool in purple; a kain panjang cloth in hand-loomed Garut silk and nautral dyes will become an amazing skirt for me soon; contemporary batik scarf on hand-woven Lao silk; green and grey silk batik sarung I use as a shawl.

Update! read about Dan's work in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Language of Cloth Trunk Show and Sale
Weekends now through December
November 23-25/30th
December 1-2 / 7-9 / 14-16 / 21-24

11 am - 6 pm
650-A Guerrero Street, San Francisco

415.613.9693 www.languageofcloth.com