A Dark Indigo Dyed Cotton Boro Panel: Hand Spun Cotton Yarns

late nineteenth, early twentieth century
73" x 19", 185.5 cm x 48.25 cm

Although this one-and-a-half loom width panel of boro cloth is simple looking and low-contrast in its dark color palette, there is much integrity to it.

The cloth, taken from a yogi or a sleeping kimono, is hand woven from hand spun, indigo dyed yarns, which is what you want to find when collecting old Japanese indigo dyed cottons.  

Furthermore, the array of cotton patches which are hand stitched to the surface all seem to be contemporary of the base cloth, that is, from the Meiji era (1868- 1912), so this piece shows good age.

Each of its two sides is illustrated here for the reason that the rich quality of the cotton yarns is more apparent on the "unpatched" side of this beautiful fragment, and the detail photos, attached here, hopefully will illustrate this.

The indigo dye is still sapphire-blue in most instances overall, although, as can be seen in these photos, there are some areas of light fading and wear which give character to this length.

A beauty from old Japan.

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