A Layered Boro Textile: Wonderful Age and a Zanshi Base

ca. late nineteenth century
57" x 12 1/2", 145 cm x 31.5 cm

This is a panel taken from a larger textile, the original piece being a futon cover (which is similar to a duvet) that was filled with cotton wadding, rice straw, hemp fiber and the like.

This is a wonderful boro textile and one that should be paid attention to: it has great age and it has fantastic, old, indigo dyed cotton cloth.

What is really spectacular about this panel of good boro is its base cloth which can be easily seen by looking at the accompanying photos to this post.  It is a zanshi ori cloth, with fixed, warp-based stripes and with leftover kasuri yarns filling in the areas between the wide stripes, yielding a surface that has a kind of "white noise" effect.

The proper "inside" of the cloth, the side with the patches, is laid on top of the zanshi ori base.  The entire surface is covered with a layer of cotton and patches which have really nice and plentiful rows of sashiko stitching which quilt this layer to the one directly under it.  All the cotton on this top layer of cloth are in a tight tonal range, producing a soft effect of a medium-toned blue.

An extremely good Japanese boro panel from old Japan.

Recommended.