A Beautiful Boro Fragment: Broken Stitches

early to mid twentieth century
12" x 16", 30.5 cm x 40.5 cm

This wonderfully worn fragment of sashiko stitched boro cloth has been cut from a larger piece. Its zokin or dust rag-like size seems to indicate that it was probably cut to be finished around the edges in order to be transformed into a zokin--a necessary variant on the reuse of hand made cloth.

As can be seen this piece is well-used and shows many rows of broken and missing sashiko stitching as well as some surface loss. Two of its four edges are hand finished.

A really lovely fragment of old cotton. It makes one wonder what the entire piece it was taken from looked like.

Great patina, color and stitching.