A Traditional Katagami or Stencil: Two Interesting Sides

early twentieth century
16 1/2" x 10", 42 cm x 25.5 cm

A katagami is a hand cut stencil that is used as a guide to apply rice paste to the surface of cloth when dyeing in the katazome method. Katagami are made of paper that has been saturated with green persimmon tannin or kaki shibu and then smoked for added durability.

This one shows a large, centrally place kanji or Chinese character which has been used to guide stenciling of a black tone. The reverse of the stencil shows a faint stenciled image, so we are to imagine that the paper used to cut this stencil was used before and repuporsed.

A lovely old katagami with a nice, bold, large-scale image and an interesting reverse side.