Two craftsmen. One artwork. The Jonathan Charles x Awagami collaboration begins with a simple idea: that the paper matters as much as the image printed on it.
For our Spring 2026 art collection, Jonathan Charles prints on Awagami, a handmade Japanese washi made by the Fujimori family at their mill in Tokushima. The result is artwork with the weight of an archival document and the quiet character of paper made by hand.
Awagami Factory sits in Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku in southern Japan. The Fujimori family has made paper there by hand across more than 300 years and 8 generations. Plant fibres, pure mountain water, no machines.
This is washi, the traditional Japanese paper recognised for its long natural fibres and soft, tactile surface. Awagami crafts its fine art papers from A+ rated natural fibres, acid-free, with the surface structure that printmakers and photographers have relied on for decades. The mill is also known for its indigo work, where the dyer Mieko Fujimori colours washi by hand in the Aizome tradition native to Tokushima.
For Jonathan Charles, the appeal was material, not decorative. Washi gives a print something machine-made stock cannot: depth in the fibre, variation across the sheet, a finish that reads as handmade the moment you stand close.
What makes this collaboration unusual is how little separates the two makers in spirit. One forms paper by hand. The other builds furniture by hand. Both work in materials the machine cannot fully replace, and both treat time as part of the craft rather than an obstacle to it
Awagami brings 8 generations of papermaking and a deep knowledge of fibre, water, and surface. Jonathan Charles brings the discipline of a house that makes furniture, frames, and finishes under one roof. Neither side outsources the thing it cares about most.
The conversation between them is material first. How a fibre holds ink. How a surface ages. How a handmade sheet changes the character of a framed work. These are craftsmen’s questions, asked by craftsmen.
The Jonathan Charles x Awagami collaboration is the start of a longer conversation between two makers. Paper formed by hand in Tokushima. Frames built by the craftsmen who build our furniture. A shared belief that how a thing is made is the thing itself.
It is craft meeting craft, with nothing left to the machine.