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

A video showing the process of kyoukechi itajime, or clamp-resist board dyeing. The final reveal at 3:20 is worth waiting for even if you can’t understand the Japanese narration. 

Back in September, I attended the Textile Society of America’s 13th Biennial Symposium, Textiles and Politics. One presentation I looked forward to was Rowland Rickett’s “Pastoral or Political? Art/Work, Public Engagement, and Indigo Farming”. I’ve posted before about Rowland Ricketts’ work here, and his recent projects are just as exciting. IndiGrowing Blue, as described on the project’s Facebook page

is a participatory art project that through the growing and processing of Japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorium) aims to explore our relationship to our raw materials and the environment from which they come. 

IndiGrowing Blue started in 2010 and is ongoing, with special events organized around the transplanting, harvesting, and processing of the indigo. 

He shared photos of himself and the local community harvesting indigo in Bloomington, and went on to discuss the exhibit “Fields of Indigo” at the Kranner Art Museum. Fresh indigo plants were brought into galleries and hung to dry to demonstrate their change in color, and dried plants carpeted the floor of another gallery for visitors to participate in winnowing the leaves from the plants (see first photo above). 

The gallery had a live sound stream set up, which tied in with sound streams in the indigo field in Bloomington and another in Tokushima, Japan on the webpage of related project, “I am Ai, We are Ai” (ai being Japanese for indigo). In Japan, traditional indigo dyers were invited to choose their favorite shade and dye a length of cloth. The lengths were cut up and put on display in locations that were once important to the indigo trade, but might now be parking lots or malls. Visitors were invited  to cut a circle of their favorite shade and create a button to wear. The strips of dyed cloth with their many holes were left up for the determined period of time, gaining more holes as new visitors arrived. Rowland Ricketts wore the button covered in his favorite cloth to his presentation for the TSA Symposium. 

textile-museum:

Curator’s Pick: Lee Talbot

Fabric for Crown Princess’ summer uchigi (outer robe)
Japan, 20th century
Silk gauze with discontinuous supplementary weft patterning
Courtesy of Hyoji Kitagawa

Gauze is a sheer fabric that helps keep you cool in the summer. Fine silk gauze is extremely expensive, however, because it is very difficult and time-consuming to weave. This silk gauze was woven in Kyoto’s prestigious Tawaraya Workshop to make a summer uchigi (outer robe) for Crown Princess Masako of Japan.

Curator’s Pick: Our curators are experts in textiles from around the world, and we’re asking them to pick a few of their favorites to share.  

Focusing on Japanese woven bamboo, over 70 beautiful pieces will be displayed in this installation, including baskets, screens, trays, containers, accessories, hand warmers, and a chair. Among the works on view are pieces by basket makers who have been designated Living National Treasures.Texture and Tradition: Japanese Woven Bamboohighlights works from the Lutz Bamboo Collection and gifts from Paul M. Hoff III and Hazel W. Hoff in memory of Paul M. Hoff Jr.

Texture and Traditionis located in the Walter + Mona Lutz Gallery, a gallery on the level 5 of the North Building designated for bamboo works from China, Japan, and Korea.

On view through July 28, 2013 at the Denver Art Museum

(via Texture & Tradition: Japanese Woven Bamboo)

I hope my friends in Denver will find the time to visit this exhibit, as well as All That Glistens: A Century of Japanese Lacquer and the upcoming Irresistible: Multicolored Textiles from Across Asia. 

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 

Last of the Rimpa school, artist Kamisaka Sekka. These early 20th century works reflect the changes in Japanese aesthetics occurring as exchanges with Western countries increased. New colors, abstract geometric designs, and an increase in the scale of motifs began to appear; yet, traditional motifs, such as the chrysanthemum and maple leaves above, persisted.

Meisen kimono also display the changes in design sensibilities and reinterpretation of traditional motifs occurring at this time, though they deserve their own post.

(Images from the NYPL)

Netsuke, a crab on a decaying lotus leaf. This piece shows the Japanese artistic appreciation for the beauty of transient things, like the decaying lotus leaf. Click through for the great introductory article from the Met on the function and types of these little carvings.