A Generous Length of Rustic Shifu: Recycled Paper Yarn Weft

43 3/4" x 14 3/4", 111 cm x 37.5 cm

This is an unusually generously sized length of visually rich and nuanced, rustic shifu which is cloth woven from twisted, hand made paper yarn.

Offered here is a desirable type of shifu, that is, one that shows traces of ink in the form of randomly grouped areas of dark blips. These clusters of dark blips are the ink that was written on the paper (washi), most likely pages from an accounting book of a type that provided the base for this wonderful shimacho, also offered today.

Note as well the presence of a red color in some areas as shown on a detail photo here: this shows where cinnabar colored stamps were imprinted onto the paper before twisting it into yarn.

The warp yarns are two shades of indigo dyed cotton which lend a barely-able-to-discern vertically-oriented striated effect to this woven length.

As said above, if you look at the surface of this length of shifu you will see small black blips that populate the weft portion of the cloth; these small markings are ink-based hand writing, and it is this detail that is desirable when considering a rustic shifu fragment.

This piece of cloth is well-used and there are two holes to the piece, one coin-sized one and smaller one about it, both very easy to see on the photos presented here. As well there are two faint red stains to the cloth on the middle part of the left hand side which are shown in detail on the fourth photo posted here.

This is a collectible length of old cloth and one that will be as much a treasure in years to come as it is now.

A rare treat.

Recommended.