A Beautiful and Unusually Mended Sakabukuro: Wide Areas of Hemp Stitching

mid twentieth century
28 1/2" x 9", 72.5 cm x 23 cm

Sakabukuro, or sake straining bags, are beautiful boro textiles. Made of cotton saturated with green persimmon tannin, or kaki shibu, which gives the distinctive brown color, this utilitarian textile was used in sake making.

Crude sake, or sake lees, was placed in this bag and pressure was applied to squeeze out and filter the liquid. Repeated use required repeated mendings and we see the wonderfully odd stitches applied for this purpose.  

This wonderful bag shows a wide unusually dense area of stitched mending.  The stitching is very attractive because of its width but also because of its material: crudely plied hemp threads were used to mend this sake straining bag.  The top of the bag is hand stitched.

A really wonderful sakabukuro, and one of a high quality and attractiveness that is becoming more and more difficult to find.

Recommended.