What fun.  This wonderful textile is a mid 19th century tenugui, a kind of all-purpose hand towel that has many everyday uses and is still very much part of Japanese life.

Tenugui are known for their fanciful designs, but this one, with is stencil resist design of insects, snails and frogs is remarkable.The cotton of this tenugui is hand loomed; the pale blue color–dyed from botanical indigo–is called asagi.In Japan, the insects depicted on this hand towel are very much associated with late summer.  Similarly, around the world, butterflies and dragonflies appear at summer’s end.I love the delicacy of the depiction of these insects……and the frog and slug.

This is a wildly charming tenugui–and it seems that it was never used.  The condition is crisp and perfect.

This tenugui measures 12 3/4″ x 37″ or 32.5 cm x 94 cm.

What a fanciful garment: this is an indigo dyed cotton han juban which is a woman’s half-under-kimono, that has been dyed in using the stencil resist method called katazome.
By fanciful, I mean the pattern on the han juban, not the garment itself.   It’s wonderful to see the repeat pattern of what appears to be bumblebees amid a network of angled, radiating, dotted lines.  This linear pattern evokes a spiderweb, which I think this is not.
The cotton of this piece is just what you’d want to see on an old, Japanese textile: hand spun cotton that has been hand loomed.  The condition of this piece, too, is very good, with the indigo still very strong and clear, and devoid of stains or distracting patina.  This han juban was made in the mid to late 19th century.A repeat pattern of insects, such as this, is not usually seen on old textiles, so this is a treat to contemplate.