A Length of Indigo Dyed Cotton Egasuri: Tsurukame

early twentieth century
39" x 13", 99 cm x 33 cm

This is a tightly woven, very lovely length of egasuri or "picture kasuri" that is in a seemingly unused state.

It depicts a familiar Japanese design motif, tsurukame or crane and tortoise, in an unusual way.

The crane is shown as origami and the tortoise is shown with his/her child.

Tsurukame is a compound word formed from the word for crane, tsuru, and tortoise, kame.

The essence of the meaning of the crane and tortoise is that of longevity: the crane was said to live for 1,000 years and the tortoise for 10,000 years so often these two images are shown together as they are here.

The cotton is hand woven and is nicely heavy; the indigo tone is deep and velvety. The spare design is artful as are the depictions of the images woven into the cloth here.

A lovely length of egasuri this shows a popular Japanese image rendered in a fairly rare way.