A Wonderfully Layered, Patched and Stitched Boro Panel: Rustic Beauty

ca. late nineteenth, early twentieth century
64" x 12 1/2", 162.5 cm x 31.5 cm

This very handsome, old boro panel is taken from a futon cover--and it demands a second look.  

It is a very good panel, one that is rich in age, hand stitching, and wonderful, old, hand loomed, indigo dyed cloth.  By looking at the texture achieved by hand stitching and the many old cotton fragments, one is easily able to tell that this is a very good example of a boro cloth, and one that should be considered for its excellent presentation and component parts.

The base cloth is hand stitched from three pieces of faded, old, plaid woven cotton.  The entire surface of this base cloth covered in patches, about 25 in all: there are so many patches hand stitched to the base that the original plaid cloth can barely be seen.

The patches are stitched using many shade of thick, blue sashiko thread with some passages of stitching being undyed white thread.

With the exception of a patch of white-on-blue kasuri cloth, it seems that all the mending patches are old cottons, notably the sankuzushi or basket weave type cotton shown at the top of the cloth.

A really wonderful, cut-above-the-rest boro panel.