A Length of Katazome Dyed Cotton: Butterflies and Two Katazome Repairs

early twentieth century
65" x 12 1/4", 165 cm x 31.5 cm

This beautiful length of indigo dyed cotton katazome cloth is equally nice on both its sides and it shows a charmingly buoyant repeat of butterflies, chrysanthemums and peonies rendered as roundels against a background of arabesque.

The length seems to be of hand spun yarns and it shows two cunningly hard-to-see patches on the right hand side, each shown in detail here.

The fact that this cloth is "reversible" is significant because this means the length was stencil resist dyed on both its sides. This means, too, that a high level of skill was needed to align the stencil resisted front and the stencil resisted back so, more than likely, an artisan of advanced experience worked on this cloth.

The two aforementioned patches are beautiful and seem to be the same age as the base cloth. They are of good quality katazome cotton, each showing a good design.

Just beautiful.