Bayon Moon

In numerous essays, Bayon Moon tells the story of IKTT and the weaving village "Project Wisdom from the Forest".



Morimoto Kikuo completed the manuscript for Bayon Moon during 2001–2002, as he was moving IKTT from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap and the workshop’s new format was beginning to take shape. He started to accept salaried staff, whom he termed trainees, and a new kind of development was evident as their numbers increased and they were organized into groups based on their responsibilities, including yarn processing, raw materials, dyeing, weaving, baskets, and events. In addition, that was the time when Morimoto was nurturing the “absolutely impossible” possibility of “Project Wisdom from the Forest—a plan for revival,” and taking the first steps toward its actualization.

(Text taken from Bayon Moon Epilogue, written by Jun Nishikawa)



In Morimoto’s own words (2016): "This village is my (life´s) work. It is like drawing a picture. I dreamed up the landscape, the picture and it happened for real."



The heart of IKTT today is the weaving village known as “ Project Wisdom from the Forest“ (PWF), located 30 km north of Siem Reap. PWF is more than a weaving village. It is a place of beauty, of humanity, and of new beginnings, where the people have been producing textiles of the finest quality for many years. At the village, the plants that are needed for dyeing are reforested, as well as those for raising the silkworms whose golden yellow cocoons later form the source material for the silk production. The villagers are continuing to weave beautiful textiles in the Khmer tradition, some of the most beautiful silk in the world, with the next generation of young weavers enriching it with new patterns and colours.



Kikuo Morimoto’s guiding principle was: “Tradition is not something to be preserved. Tradition is something that has to be created.“