Another process video, this time of yuzen dyeing - a type of hand painting using resist pastes to fill outlines and areas. 

Yuzen dyed kimono with bleeding heart flower motif by Japanese Living National Treasure Tajima Hiroshi. The myth of the bleeding heart flower is a sad story that ends with a memorial to the perished young man, in the form of the beautiful flower that helps tell his tale.

Printing komon, or small all-over repeat patterns.  This particular design is wa sarasa, “wa” standing for Japanese, and “Sarasa” being the Japanese name for Indian block printed cottons. The printing method is the same as katazome; above, the katagami, or paper stencil, is cut for one color.

Images from Project Japan.

Meisen haori and kimono.

Meisen kimono, although originating much earlier, became the popular kimono of the Taisho and Showa periods and are a form of “mass-produced” kasuri (Japanese ikat). Rather than wrapping and tying the warp threads as in traditional kasuri, they were woven with a temporary weft, printed with the desired pattern, and the weft threads were removed, allowing the warp to then be woven with the permanent weft.

The surface patterns of these pieces reflect the new fashions of a Japan increasingly involved in exchange with the rest of the world. The motifs of wisteria (fuji), cross (juji), and butterfly (chou) all belong to the traditional Japanese repertoire. However, the color and scale of pattern have changed.

The first haori, purple with a wisteria design, shows the change in the large scale and repeating nature of the pattern, where either a much smaller scale repeat or a fewer large motifs would have appeared in earlier designs. The same is true for the third, with its large scale crosses, which were a typical kasuri pattern and traditionally indigo-dyed, but here present a newly fashionable aqua.

Another traditional design element can be seen in the second haori and first kimono; urushi, or gold and silver lacquer threads, are shot through the warp and weft, throughout the haori, and in the center of the crosses of the kimono.

Aside from the reinterpretation of traditional design elements through a new color palette and exploration of scale, other designers borrowed motifs and entire designs from the Western art movements from the late 19th through early 20th century. Many of these kimono feature geometric prints clearly inspired and occasionally even copied from these movements.

More about these meisen pieces can be found at their respective Marcuson and Hall exhibit pages: 1 2 3 4 

The theme of ikat dyeing and backstrap weaving keep coming up in my favorite pieces, this time in the production of yuki tsumugi, described below. The loom used in weaving the silk is the jibata loom, which I hope to dedicate a separate post to.

Yuki-tsumugi is a Japanese silk-weaving technique found principally in Yuki City and Oyama City, along the Kinu River, north of Tokyo. The region boasts a warm climate and fertile lands, which are ideal for the growth of mulberry trees and sericulture. The Yuki-tsumugi technique is employed to produce pongee silk (also called raw silk) – a light and warm material with a characteristic stiffness and softness, traditionally used to make kimonos. Production of the material includes several stages: silk floss is spun into yarn by hand, with patterns added by hand-tying bundles of yarn before dyeing the yarn with indigo, then the silk is woven using a back-tension loom. The silk floss for the yarn in Yuki-tsumugi weaving is produced from empty or deformed silkworm cocoons, otherwise unusable for the production of silk yarn. This recycling process plays a significant role in supporting local sericulture communities. The traditional techniques to produce Yuki-tsumugi are transmitted by members of the Association for the Preservation of Honba Yuki-tsumugi Weaving Technique. This association is directly engaged in maintaining traditions of spinning, dyeing and weaving, passed down from generation to generation within the community. It promotes transmission of Yuki-tsumugi through exchange of skills, training of young weavers, and practical demonstrations.

From here - another video from the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Dip dyed shibori yukata. Unlike the shibori designs in the earlier post, which were fully immersed in dye, only tied parts of this piece were submerged to produce the carefully executed design.

A video overview of the traditional textile techniques of the Li people of Hainan Island, China, from the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. They use backstrap looms for traditional weaving (beginning at time mark 4:10) like the Yi loom I posted earlier. The video also features glimpses of traditional spinning, dyeing (including ikat), and embroidery.

Another tool and method of dyeing: a tsutsu, held by master dyer Yoshioka Sachio. The tsutsu is made from paper treated with persimmon tannin, much like the katagami (from an earlier post), but its conical shape holds the paste resist and is used like a pastry bag to ‘draw’ the resist designs on the fabric before dyeing.

The process of shibori - twisting and tying with thread, wood, even buckets and today, pieces of plastic. These “before and after” shots come from the Kyoto Shibori Kogeikan.