A Length of Beautifully Colored Zanshi ori: Variegated Weft Yarns

ca.early to mid twentieth century
74" x 13 1/4", 188 cm x 33.5 cm 

Zanshi ori is cloth that is woven from threads either leftover from home production of yarn making, or from broken threads that were purchased from local commercial weavers.  Usually the weft is fed with these random threads while generally the warp is regulated producing an irregular horizontal 'striping'; if home threads are used, knotted slubs can often be seen.

This is the case with this long piece of hand woven zanshi ori cotton cloth.  The warp yarns are fixed and alternate blue and white.  The weft yarns show a random, variegated coloring up the length, the colors being deep indigo, red, and white.  Looking carefully at the surface of this hand woven cloth, you can see the small knots which were used to join the leftover yarns together to form one, continuous thread.

This piece length is machine stitched from two pieces of cloth; the two patches are hand stitched.

Really lovely.