A Three Piece Length of Zanshi ori: Patched

early twentieth century
19" x 36", 48.25 cm x 91.5 cm

Zanshi ori is cloth that is woven from threads either leftover from home production of yarn making, or from broken threads that were purchased from local commercial weavers.  

This is a beautifully murky example of old zanshi ori: it is hand stitched from three separate, short pieces of indigo dyed cotton zanshi  ori and the panel here shows three cotton mending patches, too.

The cloth is dark in tone and there is ample evidence of arbitrarily fed, leftover cotton weft yarns: the variation in the tones seen in the weft attests to this and is the main attractor to this humble form of every day weaving.

This is a lovely object and one with good looking zanshi ori with good age.