A Length of Shirakage Shibori: Wandering Tatewaku

early twentieth century
51 1/2" x 12 1/4", 131 cm x 31 cm

This is an attractive fragment that shows a difficult shibori technique called shirakage: to create a design on cloth using this technique the artisan must hide all the undyed cloth and expose only what is intended to be dyed before immersing the entire bolt in the dye bath.

This requires tremendous skill and experience.

The pattern on this length is just great and fairly unusual.

Its a swooping, meandering form of the traditional tatewaku pattern which is often rendered as undulating but parallel lines. These lines are not parallel and this in intentional.

This fragment is in good condition save for some ingrained creases from its former life as part of yukata or an unlined, summer kimono. 

Very nice looking and quite unusual--a beautiful length of shibori.

Recommended.