A Beautifully Stitched and Mended Sakabukuro: Sake Filter

early twentieth century
30 1/2" x 9 1/2", 77.5 cm x 24 cm 

This is an excellent, artful example of a sakabukuro and it shows beautiful mending stitches to the front and back of the bag: fantastic. The bag is entirely hand stitched.

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 to filter sake.

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 is an extremely handsome sakabukuro, and one of a quality that is becoming more and more difficult to find. Please note the several tones of color on the cotton mending stitches: from this we can see from this that the bag was dipped several times over time in kaki shibu.

Very recommended.