A Beautifully Stitched and Designed Komebukuro: Fully Lined in Old Indigo

This lovely drawstring bag is hand sewn from about 40 pieces of hand loomed and machine loomed Japanese cottons and shows an assortment of charmingly varied and beautifully colored fragments.

This kind of piece-constructed, drawstring bag is often referred to as a komebukuro.  

Komebukuro are bags that were used to bring token offerings of uncooked rice or beans to a temple or shrine festival, the piecing and patching often being thought-out and planned, for festive effect.   

This bag is fully lined in old indigo dyed cotton and the family crest or kamon which was resist dyed on the re-purposed indigo used as the lining is easily seen and shown here on the accompanying detail photos.  Please note there is one fragment of cloth missing from the outside of the bag: it is the size of a postage stamp.

A marvelous bag, it is one that shows a really lovely and good range of hand loomed cottons--it is an object that beautifully calls up the spirit of old Japan.