Aki Takeshita is a textile and product designer whose practice brings together indigo dyeing, craftsmanship, community-based knowledge and alternative economic models. He graduated in textile and product design from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 2007 and began his career working for large interior and product design companies in Japan and Europe. During these years, he was deeply involved in industrial design processes and mass production, gaining technical expertise as well as insight into global design systems.
Over time, however, Aki began to question the direction of his work.
“Design is about solving problems”, he reflects, “but what problem am I actually solving, and who am I really working for?”
While designing primarily for luxury markets, he became increasingly uncomfortable with the social and environmental implications of this work. This period of reflection led him to reconsider the role of the designer and to ask what he could contribute to society and local communities with the skills he had.
From 2015 onwards, Aki started working as a freelance designer between Milan and Tokyo. Living in Italy exposed him to different traditions of craftsmanship and strengthened his interest in shared practices, the gift economy and community-based making. During this time, he collaborated with the Milan Fab Lab, organized workshops and began developing open, DIY-oriented textile practices rooted in his academic background. Shibori workshops became an important entry point, eventually leading him to focus more deeply on indigo dyeing.
Indigo appealed to Aki not only for its cultural significance, but also for its technical and ecological potential. Compared to many other dye processes, indigo dyeing does not require boiling large quantities of water and works at relatively low temperatures, making it suitable for both small and large-scale applications. He became particularly interested in Japanese indigo fermentation, including the preparation of sukumo, composted indigo leaves and the living bacterial processes that enable dye baths to function. Caring for the bath, maintaining oxygen balance, temperature and time, became for him a lesson in sustainability and long-term thinking.
A central theme in Aki’s work is the fragility of knowledge transfer and maybe even transmission. Much traditional indigo knowledge in Japan has historically been passed on orally, from craftsperson to apprentice. Wars, migration, industrialization and social change have all contributed to the loss or fragmentation of this knowledge. Different regions in Japan developed distinct indigo recipes and philosophies. In Tokushima, for example, techniques evolved toward faster, more intense dyeing suitable for mass production, often using boosted baths. In northern regions, dyers traditionally worked on smaller scales, growing indigo in their own gardens and favoring slower, unboosted processes that they describe as “true indigo.” These approaches coexist, sometimes in tension, and recipes are often closely guarded rather than shared publicly.
Aki positions his work within this field by thinking of abundance rather than scarcity. He envisions systems where indigo plants are grown collectively and dyeing becomes a shared resource. One of his long-term visions is that, in ten to twenty years, every kindergarten or community garden could grow indigo. Even small plots, when multiplied across neighborhoods, could result in substantial harvests. This idea connects directly to his interest in the gift economy: he offers to dye garments for people while giving them seeds to grow indigo themselves, creating reciprocal relationships instead of transactional ones!
His practice also focuses on local production and local consumption. Aki sees second-hand clothing as a valuable local material and describes himself as a modern ragman, reactivating existing textiles through color. By working with local fibers, discarded garments and regionally grown plants, he challenges the extractive and dominant logic of global textile supply chains.
Through his ongoing research, workshops and collaborative projects under the name Shibori Lab, Aki continues to explore how traditional indigo knowledge can inform contemporary, sustainable textile practices, rooted in place, care, community, and shared responsibility.
More about his work can be found at: www.shiborilab.info