A 76-year-old Kyoto dye workshop turns temple-banner technique into everyday goods for a department-store stage

kiten.kyoto, the brand of the 76-year-old Kyoto workshop Katou Ken Hata-ten, takes the Pop Up Stage 21 space on the second floor of Takashimaya Kyoto from 7 to 13 October, open 10:30am to 8pm with free admission, as part of what Takashimaya calls its "Tsunagu Action" programme, according to the company.

The workshop specialises in dyeing noren shop curtains and temple and shrine banners using hikizome, a technique in which pigment is brushed directly across fabric stretched taut, rather than dipped or immersed — a hand process that leaves each piece with slightly different tones and brushwork, according to the company. For the pop-up, it applies the technique to everyday items: a cotton chest apron called Maku, priced at ¥13,750 in four colours, alongside a cooking coat, a waist apron, a laptop sleeve and a gadget pouch made in the Hanten range, and a tote bag made from furoshiki cloth.

The company said it repurposes brush marks at the fabric's edge, portions that would normally be discarded, as a design accent, and shapes some pieces with gathered folds that echo the way temple banners are traditionally bundled. The workshop said noren and banners are part of the everyday street landscape yet largely go unnoticed, and that it wants customers to discover who makes them and to understand the traditional technique behind them.

This is the department-store event-floor formula at its smallest scale: a craft workshop whose usual output, shopfront curtains and shrine banners, carries no retail price tag at all, translated for a week into priced, wearable goods that fill calendar space between bigger tenant news, without requiring either side to commit to a permanent lease.