The Humble Zokin and the Laughing Pomegranate

The Humble Zokin and the Laughing Pomegranate

Zokin is a cleaning cloth traditionally made in Japan by repurposing scraps of old clothes. The fabric is cut in pieces and hand stitched together using sashiko embroidery.

I fell in love with the zokin at a time when I was going through old clothes to give away to charity shops but the shops were so full that they could not accept more.

This coincided with something strange happening in my garden. This year there were no fruits. All the fruit trees had lost their flowers when a period of warm weather and early flowering was followed by extreme cold. The persimmons and pomegranates had their tender new leaves frozen.

The meditative space created by making zokins brought me to the rich colours of the kilos of pomegranate that every year were transformed into molasses, my hands tinted in red. This year nothing. Then I found two very late pomegranate flowers. I watched them grow until one started to laugh. The laughter of the Pomegranate was a sign of resistance. As was repurposing the old clothes intended to the rubbish.

Marily Cintra 2025