About Us

Our passion and our mission.

To preserve, protect and promote

traditional craft skills.

At Kasumisou Gallery we are proud to promote products made by skilled artisans who can still create beautiful things with their own hands. Many employ traditional but increasingly scarce craft skills and often are the second, third or even fourth generation members of their families to practice these crafts. 

Below, please see photos and read brief stories of a few of the expert craftspeople who make the products of which we are so proud. 

Contact us anytime to learn more about our products and our mission to support and sustain traditional crafts skills and dignified employment for people who still make things by hand.  

●  What does “Kasumisou” mean?

“Kasumisou” is the name of both our charity foundation and our e-commerce business. 

It is a Japanese word comprised of two characters when written.  Those characters are “kasumi” 霞　which, when standing alone, means “mist” or “haze” and “sou” 草 which means “grass.” 

When combined as a single word – 霞草 – we can translate them literally as “misty grass”  but, in fact, “kasumisou” is the name in Japanese for the tiny white flowers which, in English, we call “Baby’s Breath.”

Click below to view a very brief video showing the correct manner of writing our name in Japanese.

Handwoven Cambodian silk scarves

In the photo at the lower left corner above we can see our skilled weaver preparing silk thread for weaving some of Kasumisou Gallery’s “olive medley” handwoven silk scarves shown in the thumbnail photo at the lower right.

Our handwoven Cambodian silk scarves are comprised of up to six distinct color bands of warp (vertical) threads and six to ten color bands of weft (horizontal) threads.  The bright blue thread shown in the photos above will be used for one of the warps in our “olive medley” scarf. 

Beginning at the upper left in the photos above we can see a skein of raw, white silk yarn, the four dyed colors of yarn which will be used for the weft threads and the four dyed colors which will be used for the warp threads of our four warp ‘olive medley scarves. (We also offer the ‘olive medley’ scarf with six warps.) After dyeing the silk, the weaver must begin the  task of setting up her loom with the required length of each warp band.  That process can require as much as two to three weeks of very painstaking work.  Only then can she begin the process of weaving the weft colors into the warp threads on her loom.  Once the loom is set with the warp threads, a highly skilled weaver may be able to complete two of our scarves per day. After the weaving process is finished, the scarfs are delivered to Phnom Penh where a different team of skilled artisans carefully washes the scarves to remove the starch (usually from rice water) which was applied to keep the warp silk stiff and straight on the loom.  At this time the fringe threads are braided and, finally, the scarf is ironed and ready to wear.

Japanese stencil dyed sarasa silk 

The photos above show a highly skilled sarasa craftsman in Japan as he prepares a roll of sarasa stencil dyed silk for application of the next layer of color.  In this case he will be adding the blue background to a piece of silk on which he has already applied the numerous stencil patterns which give sarasa pattern dyed silk its unique character.

Each roll of sarasa silk measures 13 meters in length and approximately 40cm in width.  One roll yields enough silk for making a single standard kimono and, due to the painstaking labor required to produce the sarasa patterns, a single 13 meter long roll of sarasa silk might cost the equivalent of a few thousand U.S. dollars.

In the photos above we see the craftsman unroll the silk and suspend it from one end of the workshop to the other.  He then inserts bamboo stretches containing metal pins in each end to make the surface of the silk taut.  Only then can he begin applying the next layer of color.  In the photos shown here, he has already finished applying the stencil patterns and is now beginning to apply the blue background.  It was from this particular piece of silk that our new blue sarasa silk and acrylic bangle bracelets (photo in lower right) were made. 

Hand hammered stainless steel tableware

In the photos directly above, we see the stainless sheets (upper left corner) which a skilled craftsman will hammer into one of our stainless steel square trays.  Once the hammering is done and the tray has achieved its desired shape, it is sent to the polishing bench where it will acquire the brilliant, mirror-like  finish which gives this truly handmade product its elegant look.  The craftsman shown in most of the photos above is the second generation of his family (both his father and uncle did this work) to work for this small company which employs a total of only about 12 people and produces our stainless steel tableware. The company is about 60 years old and is run by the second generation of the family which founded it.