Bubbles on the surface of fermenting wine. Fog hanging above blue seas. Lichen on the wind-worn lines of a gray tree. The blackish-brown depths of textured soil.
These are among countless scenes that designer Teruhiro Yanagihara drew upon to create a palette of 28 colors for Danish design company Kvadrat’s new textile project, Haku. Inspired by the natural gradations of primitive textiles, ancient trees, rare plants and sacred stones, Haku offers a modern riff on the traditional colors of Japan, which have been immortalized in kimono textiles, nihonga pigment paints, lacquerware motifs, ceramic glazes and the cadences of early poetry for centuries.
The end result? A spectrum of shades, from light neutrals to deeper notes, that defy objective categorization — among them, the milky off-white Nyuhaku, slate-inspired Sekiban-iro and Haizakura’s grayish tinge of cherry blossoms.