A few years ago while in Kyoto, I booked an appointment to visit Katsura Detached Palace, the world-famous 17th century princely retreat, and one of Japan’s most beautiful architectural treasures.  Katsura-rikyu, as it is also called, is studied world-wide for the perfection in its proportions and details, and for the magnificent beauty of its restrained elegance.

Katsura-rikyu’s architectural details are fascinating and endless.  I’m showing here a few details of shoji from but one corner of the palace.  This set of photos is  a mere sliver off the top of an Everest of stunning visual delights which Katsura-rikyu offers.

You can see why I stopped to look carefully at these windows: I loved seeing the wood fretting of the windows through an overlay of washi paper, the seams of which are in counter-rhythm to that of the interior fenestration.

Even though Katsura-rikyu is basically a heaven-on-earth and the abode of ancient Japanese royalty, staggeringly beautiful details in traditional Japanese architecture abound in all parts of Japan, from historically important public buildings to the homes of simple families.  Have a look at these photos–and enjoy!

Two balls of hand plied Japanese hemp yarn and a skein of raw cotton yarn, sitting in a mended trough from Gilgit, Pakistan, seen in soft light.

This is a selection of nine different, hand stenciled paper pouches–by pouch I mean that each is a folded piece of paper which is machine sewn on three sides with the exception of an unsewn length of about 6″/15 cm on one of the short sides.   The group dates to the early Showa Period (1926-1989).

From left to right, the patterns are: chrysanthemum, grape and squirrel, hanabishi (or “diamond flower”) and chrysanthemum, shippo tsunagi or interlocking circles, shippo tsunagi with central flower pattern, shippo tsunagi, butterfly, abstract floral pattern, grape and squirrel.

I’m offering a few of these paper pouches for sale on my website, here.

They’re really beautiful, aren’t they?

This is a group of five Japanese sakiori obis which are rolled and seen from above. 

Sakiori is weaving technique that uses “recycled,” shredded cotton textiles as weft yarns.  Earliest examples of sakiori weaving extend back to the early 19th century when poor people were able to acquire cotton rags for the first time: until this time, cotton was a scarce commodity as it had recently been introduced to Japan and only the wealthier echelon of society could afford to buy it.

Rural folk couldn’t afford to buy cotton garments, so they bought rags: they cleaned and shredded the rags and used them to create thick cloth which they fashioned into clothing.  Sakiori weaving endured in Japan until the mid-twentieth century.

These obis date from the mid-twentieth century; most sakiori obis date from the early-to-mid twentieth century.  Have a look at this lovely one here, and another example of sakiori weaving–just gorgeous–here.

This photo was taken by Lyn Hughes.

On today’s post I am showing a selection of shibori from my collection–shibori is the famous “shape resist dyed” cloth of Japan which is akin to tie-dyeing.  All of the images below are details from various shibori yukata, a yukata being an unlined, “casual” kimono, and the examples displayed range in age from (approximately) the end of the 19th century until about 1940 or so.

Most of the pieces are hand loomed cotton which has been dyed in indigo, with one exception being  a hemp garment dyed in benibana or safflower dye, the safflower yielding a bright magenta color in this case.

Some pieces shown have been sold, some are offered for sale on my website now, some will be offered in the future, and some I am keeping in my own collection.

Almost all the shibori shown here was created in Japan’s shibori capital, the area encompassing the towns of Arimatsu and Narumi, near Nagoya, where in the late 19th century endless variations on the shibori technique were invented and proliferated.

For more in-depth information on shibori, the resource I would suggest is “Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing” by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, Mary Kellogg Rice and Jane Barton, available here.

Above: yanagi or willow shibori.

I will offer this yukata (above) on my website on 20 May.

This shibori has a dyed grey field.  The shibori is of the typed referred to as tatsumaki arashi, or diagonal diamond net.

Tesuji or hand pleated shibori, above.  This is currently for sale on my website.

Above, shirokage or white shadow shibori showing the tatewaku motif.

The motif is interlocking circles or shippo tsunagi: the shibori is created by stitching a piece of paper into a fold in the cloth: this allows the proper resist to create a pattern as shown above.

Okkochizome or a kind of shibori where selected areas of cloth were dip dyed.  The motif is the kiri or pauwlonia flower which is associated with the legendary phoenix in Japanese Buddhist symbolism.

Above: pleating done in two directions yields this striking check pattern.

Benibana or safflower dyed hemp: the pattern shows folding fans, plum blossoms and chidori, or plovers.

Above: suji or pleated shibori.  A variation is offered for sale on my website, here.

Suji or pleated shibori vertical stripes with stencil applied color on the horizontal stripes (surikomi).

Shirokage shibori in the form of the hemp leaf or asa-no-ha, one of Japan’s traditional motives.