A Length of Mame Shibori: Variant on "Bean" Shibori

early twentieth century
38 1/2" x 12", 98 cm x 30.5 cm

This length of hand woven cotton cloth shows a very subtle shibori pattern of rows of narrow lines of small blue dashes.

The pattern is a variant on mame shibori, or bean shibori, which is characterized by rows of small, inky blue dots the size and shape of beans.

Mame shibori is created by hand using a kind of "primitive" folding and dyeing mechanism, the result being this length of white cotton that is studded by even rows of small bean-sized stains of indigo dye.  

On this example, as is obvious from the accompanying photos, the pleating and dyeing was done is such a way as to yield very delicate, horizontal broken lines of blue.

The hand woven cotton cloth itself is lovely and the yarns are hand spun.

Just beautiful.