Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is considered one of the most knowledgeable and highly regarded teachers of textile art in the world. She is credited with introducing the art of Japanese Shibori in the United States. Ms. Wada is the founder of the Slow Fiber Studio, and served as a trustee for the American Craft Council, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art. She is president of World Shibori Network and in 2010, Yoshiko Wada was titled as a “Distinguished Craft Educator – Master of Medium” by the James Renwick Alliance.

Ms. Wada is an acclaimed lecturer, author, curator, and tour leader: she has produced a series of instructional films with Michel Garcia for Sustainable Natural Dye Practice and documentary “Arimatsu Narumi Shibori: 400 years of Japanese Artisan Design with Hiroshi Murase and Andrew Galli”. She has a B.F.A. from Kyoto University and an M.F.A. from University of Colorado Boulder.

She now continues to lead a wide range of workshops and lectures, with an emphasis on sustainability, tradition, and innovation and design in the subjects of natural dye, resist dyeing and the re-use of material.
Hiroshi Murase is a fifth generation descendant of the Murase family from Arimatsu Japan, considered the birthplace of the Shibori technique. For over three hundred year the family has been instrumental in the development of textile designs using a variety of stencil processes with traditional Shibori practices.

Hiroshi Murase is well versed in a wide range of Shibori techniques. He is internationally respected as an artisan and enterprising designer with more than forty years of experience in the textile field.
Mr. Murase is Chairman of the family-owned studio, Suzusan Shoten and works alongside his eldest son in Germany as lead designers of this ancient art.

Since the 1990s, Mr. Murase started designing and producing not only Japanese traditional Yukata fabrics but also textiles for fashion and interiors using the Arimatsu Shibori techniques. Mr. Murase serves as Secretary General of the International World Shibori Network-Japan.