A staple of the Japanese household since the 9th century, the humble Tenugui is a hand-dyed rectangular cloth (13 x 35") equally at home in the pocket, as it is in the kitchen or the workshop. Ours are hand-dyed in Japan using "chusen", a traditional technique in which the dye penetrates the cloth rather than sitting on its surface, leaving the pattern visible on both sides and the hand remarkably soft. Each pattern carries its own name and meaning. In the wabi-sabi spirit, the edges are left unhemmed, so expect some slight fraying, and the character that comes with it.

Sugi is the Japanese cedar, a towering conifer that covers roughly a tenth of Japan and has supplied timber for its temples, shrines, and sake barrels for over a thousand years. Aya means twill. Together the name describes a field of herringbone V-shapes that read as cedar needles.