網目 | Amime | Net Mesh | Patterns #8

 The Amime pattern is a repeating series of ovals, whose tailends resemble brackets stuck together to make a pattern like fancy chicken wire. Some resemble more of a wavy line. The pattern therefore is said to resemble mesh which finds its origins in fishing and hunting nets and recommended to be worn in summer.[1] The pattern is said to take its name from the space between the lines of fishing netting.[2] This ties in with the phrase 'Ichimou Daijin' meaning to always have a large catch, or to be victorious in your fishing pursuits.[4]

Japanese Glass Fishing Float in Net (2007, CC3.0) Jon Zander

Historically Amime can be found in the Edo period, combined with fish motifs by Heimin/Shomin.  This idea comes from the popular Edo retelling of how the Boddhisattva Kannon made the area today, Asakusa into a bountiful fishing settlement. On 18 March 628, the fishermen brothers Hinokuma Hamanari and Takenari had a statue of Kannon get stuck in their fishing net. The statue repeatedly got stuck in their net, and was eventually given over to Buddhists, which is now where Sensoji Temple stands. It was was said the area flourished and by the 9th century, was a highly prosperous fishing and pilgrimage site. By the Edo period with the new Tokugawa shogunate move to the Eastern capital of Edo, the legend took on new significance and became more popular, becoming affiliated with the Amime pattern and worn as a popular Yukata pattern.[3][4] Common motifs worn in the 18th and 19th centuries included fish, Ebi ( 海老 | Shrimp), Tako ( 蛸 | Octopus) to contrast the back and foreground.[5] It was used by samurai as it was thought to allow the wearer a guaranteed victory or catch.[1] Certainly by the Taisho era, Amime continues with Tobiuo ( 飛魚 | flying fish) motifs as popular fashion that I can recall seeing around online. 

Patterns #9 will be on Higaki.

Bibliography

[1] https://int.kateigaho.com/articles/tradition/patterns-13/

[2] https://www.vamakitchens.net/products/amime

[3] https://uk.hotels.com/go/japan/senso-ji-temple

[4] https://www.kimono-gara.com/season/natsu/amine/

[5] https://www.kimono-kyoto.jp/mt/archives/2008/02/post_119.html

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着物とラファエロ前派の画家たち | Kimono and the Pre-Raphaelite Painters | 1864 - 1877 | Essay #7

This essay will cover the aspects of Kimono in the Portraiture of the Pre-Raphaelites. The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of British artists and writers active during the late Victorian period. Unlike the Royal Academy artists, this circle of painters operated outside of the established comfortable boundaries of the expected white, cisgender middle class audience of the Victorian age. The movement is notable for its inclusion and encouragement of women, and in portraying and engaging non-conventional beauty and beauties as figures from the Classical World alongside Religious, Mythological and Folklore Heroines into Victorian 'Femme Fatales'.[8]

Morgan Le Fay (1864) Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys

The woman portrayed in our first image is the mythological heroine Morgan le Fay by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904). Sandys as an artist often produced beautiful images of voluptuous women whose hair was often in freefall, here painting his mistress Keomi Gray (1849–1914) as the magickian of Arthurian legend. It is most likely that Sandys acquired his Kimono through either an import merchant shop in London, or from a bulk warehouse such as Farmer & Rogers’ Great Shawl & Cloak Emporium's Eastern Goods Warehouse.

Sandys uses the Kimono here as an aesthetical tool. The dramatic colours fit into the bold colour schemes which were characteristic of the Brotherhood. The Kimono itself is clearly a Furisode, perhaps for a young woman of wealthier status going by the red inside of the sleeves. Whilst unknown if Sandys was aware of this, Green in Japan was recognised as being associated with nature, vitality and immortality.[3][4]  Green was also a favourite of the Victorians as associated with the natural or nonindustrial world, and the occult, specifically the fae.[5] Red for the Victorians would signify (military) power, boldness and ardour.[6]

Whilst it is unknown how much Sandys collected or and understood of Japanese aesthetics, he was a clear early adopter of the aesthetical importance of Kimono in placing it at the center of the composition. The placement with other objects of Middle and Far Eastern and Celtic origin  also may offer further clues as to the mindset of how Sandys used the Kimono as a signifier of the junction of wisdom and power, and in this depiction as a enchantress, using the green which was associated with the occult at the time to denote this. It is most likely Sandys therefore used it to denote the atmosphere of the otherworld of the green man and employed the silks lustre to enhance this effect.[5]

Young woman applying Makeup | The Pearl (1876) Frederick Sandys

(c.1795) Kitagawa Utamaro |                                                 

Sandys was certainly aware of used Japanese motifs in many of his works, using Mon, Uchiwa fans, gold Byobu and references to Ukiyo-e seemingly as in his 1876 Pearl painting. As you can see,the mirror motif, falling robe and upswept hair reveal the curving nape, a proponent of Japanese admiration and attraction in the female beauty standard. Whilst as mixed with the Hellenestic ideal by Sandys, Sandys particularly used the curved or revealed nape motif in his portraits and drawings and obviously came into contact with enough Japanese objects to merit his understanding of the Bijin in the age of the Japan Cult (see the Glossary).

The Beloved (1865) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Those depicted in this painting were from 12:00 Clockwise the models Alexa Wilding (1847-1884), Fanny Eaton (1835-1924), Keomi Gray, Gabriel (model dates unknown) and Ellen Smith (active 1863-1869) and Marie Ford (dates unkown). Interestingly the young child figure Gabriel is meant to act as a stand in for Rossetti to the viewer, who both attend to the central bridal figure.[1]

The Kimono presented here is most likely the same as that used in Frederick Sandys Morgan le Fay (1864), although Rosetti was known to have a rivalry with Whistler in the collection of Japanese art objects which Rosetti first began collecting from the famous French importer Madame Louise Mélina Desoye (1836-1909). Rosetti frequented these establishments as he was a collector of beautiful objects of global origins, with his inspiration in composition being drawn from the classical world of Renaissance Italy and the Greek Hellenistic standard.

Kimono is used here arguably in juxtaposition with other elements of the Beauty of Venus trope, which Rosetti used to reference the beauty ideal in Titians Venus with Mirrors (1555).[1] The Venus trope is a particularly frequent one used by Rosetti, here denoting the wife of King Solomon de-robing for her husband in lavish dress. Venus at the center, is surrounded by mirrors or here reflecting beauties, which either signify in Titians work her vanity, or under the original Greek understanding of Venus as a/the great standard of beauty, signifying the beauty of those surrounding Venus as well, imparting the notion of beauty in the objects and clothes they wear, ie Kimono, therefore.[2] 

Kimono here is used not as an allegorical device to my knowledge, but in appreciation of its dyed colour and ability to drape, as Rosetti frequently used bright colours in his paintings and a common gripe among the Pre-Raphaelites was the ability to find decent cloth which would hang as they desired with the ability catch light correctly and as needed for producing such lavish, decorative and bold paintings as the Beloved. The Kimono itself here is bundled up at the sleeves and clearly displays a pattern along the sleeve of Plum and Bamboo, and may perhaps be worn back to front.

The inclusion of Kimono tells us that was in the early acceptance of Kimono as beautiful objects in British painting. Kimono clearly held a place among the Pre-Raphaelites as art objects, if not for their usefulness in their ability to provide useful fabric qualities but also for their decorative patterning to be included rather than painted out.

Girls Portrait (1868) George Price Boyce

The sitter for this portrait is Anonymous as very little information is held surrounding this portrait, but ould easily be one of the many muses of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Marie Spartali Stillman (1844-1927), Fanny Cornforth (1835-1909), Jane Morris (1839-1914), Georgiana Burne-Jones (1840-1920), Effie Gray (1828-1897), Maria Zambaco (1843-1914), Aglaia Coronio/Ionides (1834-1906) Elizabeth Burden (1841-c1902) or Annie Miller (1835–1925).

It is most likely that Boyce had access to Kimono through either their own collecting of objects or from an artist friend who collected Kimono, perhaps someone such as Rosetti. However given that the Pre-Raphaelites had painted Kimono, it is also plausible this could have been Boyce's own Kimono, which Boyce would have come into contact with through most likely similar means to Rosetti, or through other proto-Department or Emporium stores which by 1867 were known to stock them in limited quantities as items for decorating the home.

By this time as Kimono had become more available, and were highly sought after items amongst artists for their ability to drape, which allowed the painter more room for playing with light and depth in their work. Boyce may have particularly taken to this Kimono as it depicted rural lifestyles, as seen in the blue section of fencing motif and presumably larger structure in the blue fold on the neck. Boyce as a painter was a frequent landscape painter using soft tones and spots of colour, so this particular pattern which distributes ornamental Ji-Monnyou using florals and scenes of Japanese farm life would be right up his alley. The Blue, White and Red may also be reminiscent of the Blue and White porcelain Rosetti famously collected, or perhaps specifically within the English context the collection of Kakiemon Porcelain colour pallettes as well. 

Amber (1876) | The End of the Story (1877) Albert Moore

Now whilst this is a bit presumptuous of me because Arabesque patterns were no doubt also used in Albert Moore use of Turkish and Persian patterning, I do believe his use of this fabric is indicative of popular Kimono patterns available in the West at the time. Only a hunch, however Moore was more than familiar with Japanese Ukiyo-e and design theory having being introduced to it in the late 1850s if I recall correctly. However, the pattern layout is reminiscent enough of trailing vines and wisteria, small florals and possible matsu motifs that is plausible this could be Japanese fabric.

In conclusion therefore we see that by 1865, Kimono as art objects had developed a highly sought after reputation among artists for their beauty and decorative qualities. By 1867, Kimono had clearly become established as an item used in the Pre-Raphaelites repertoire of costumes and props to embody on their own resplendent decorative beauty  within the feminine mystic and lover archetype. By the 1870's, the wider influence of the Japan Cult had come to pass which is reflected in the wider and more subtle use of Japan as influencing composition, aesthetics and for the Pre-Raphaelites, inspiration surrounding the female form and beauty. Kimono formed an early visual engagement with British artists between Japanese and Western sensibilities, during what Ono; byway of Lacambre; terms the Discovery stage of British Japonisme for each the 1860s, and Adoption by the 1870s in Pre-Raphaelites Art.[7]

Bibliography

[1] http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/s182.raw.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_with_a_Mirror

[3] https://kokoro-jp.com/culture/298/

[4] https://www.color-meanings.com/color-meanings-japan/

[5] https://madeleineemeraldthiele.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/huxtable-on-her-false-crafts-morgan-le-fay-and-the-wild-women-of-sandys/

[6] https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/the-red-craze/

[7] Japonsime in Britian: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and nineteenth century Japan, Ayako Ono, 2003, p.18, RoutledgeCurzon

[8] https://www.artandobject.com/articles/women-pre-raphaelite-art

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阿波 しじら織 | Awa Shijira-ori | Crinkled Cotton Weave | Fabrics #7

Awa Shijira-Ori is a woven fabric which resembles a crinkly cotton finish. This uneven finish is known as Shibo ( Down-up | 凹凸 ). Shijira is originally made in Tokushima, and is usually worn as a summer textile for workwear or as yukata, being able to combat the humid Japanese summers easily as it is commonly woven using cotton threads with an open weave in indigo dyes.[1][3]

Shijira weave is made by sorting, measuring and scouring your yarns. The yarns are then dyed and rinsed as the colour dictates, measured and dried. These yarns are twisted into threads, as tight uneven weft threads and immersing the yarn underwater in a vat. These are removed being left out to air-dry with 'gloiopeltis glue' added which stops the threads from 'fluffing'. The warp threads are re-submerged in hot water, (75 degrees) to remove the glue and the process repeated and are at times dyed in another colour simultaneously.  The two warp and weft threads are combined into the loom and woven together, the warp threads being more shrunken due to their greater exposure and treatment, creating the 'crepe' or crinkle finish in their bid for freedom from the tighter weft threads. The fabric is measured and resized with the rolling the cloth into a Tan ( 反 | Kimono fabric roll ) fabric bolt of around 1100cm length, 40cm wide. This creates a varied pattern of alternating bumpy threads and one separately dyed warp threads as the threads shrink and dry, creating a vivid Shijira weave stripe pattern with its definitive Shibo quality.[1][3][4]

Tokushima Prefecture (2007, Public Domain) Bobo12345

During the Edo period, the lord of Awa decreed that Heimin (commoners | 平民) were not to wear silk, part of the Sumptuary legislation in reaction to the wealth of the merchant classes (1604-1685) and regulation of export and imports of foreign trade in silk and cotton (1615-1685) in the wider Edo culture and tightening of the textile trades.[2] Instead therefore, the Heimin created and found new beauty in textiles such as Shijira weave or Tatae-Ori as it is known in Tokushima, which was worn by farmers, becuase of its light and durable nature and fun patterns. During the Meiji period, the technique was recovered in Awa's Atake village by Kaifu Hana c.1860-1869, when a striped Kimono had been left out in the rain, and dried in the sun. Hana noted that sections of the cloth had shrunk, producing the Shibo effect.[5] Inspired, she recreated the effect after much trial and error by reweaving warp threads in a cotton weave, creating the desired puckering or Shibo.[1] By the of the 1890s, production of the cloth totalled 2 million bolts a year, today only in its thousands by a handful of family owned businesses.[3] By the 1910s, the  traditional association with indigo dying was superseded by brighter chemical dyes, but was revived after 1945 and designated in 1978 under Awashouai-Shijirao as a traditional craft.[5] The textile is now protected and still made locally in Tokushima Prefecture in industrial quantity.

Next Fabric post will be on Chirimen.

Bibliography

[1] http://www.jtco.or.jp/en/japanese-crafts/?act=detail&id=252&p=36&c=33

[2] See the Bijin Series Timeline and Bijin post #3

[3] https://theardentthread.com/2010/02/03/awa-shijira-ori/

[4] https://voyapon.com/kimono-japanese-traditional-clothing/

[5] Swatch Favourite Fabric No 41 Awa Shijira-ori, Sarah Jane Downing, March 2018, Issue 81, p.98, Selvedge Magazine, London | https://issuu.com/selvedgemagazine/docs/81_japan_blue

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仲朗 | Zhou Fang | 730 - 800 | Bijin #7

Zhou was a Tang era Chinese painter who inspired Iwasa Matabei's classically inspired drawings which became the basis for Ukiyo-e in the second half of the 17th century. Zhou painted for the Imperial Chinese Tang court Emperor Dezong between 779-800, but his own background came from being a painter in a noble family during Tang China, specialising in pictures of beautiful court women. He himself was inspired by Gu Kaizhi (344–406) and Zhang Xuan (713–755) and lived in Chang'an, modern Xi'an city working during a time which saw a change in beauty standards for Chinese women and idealised imagery of beauty. He is best known for his Court Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers and Court Lady With Servants.[12]

Court Ladies adorning their Hair with Flowers (c799) Zhou Fang

Chinese historical figure depiction in the time of Kaizhi was rather two dimensional until the end of the Six Dynasty era (220–589) and began forming new ideals as power shifted from the Northern-South Kingdoms with the sixteen kingdoms (304 to 439) and the Sui Dynasty onto to Tang China by 618AD. During the end of the Six Dynasty period, Chinese art began to become more ethereal, light and evocative of the three rather than two dimensional. Acceptable figures to portray as beautiful, were the immortal nymphs of Chinese legends, over this period (300-550AD) the clothes of these figures began to become more fitted and showed off the wearers body.[4] Women of the era were seen through a form of the patriarchal lense in a Confucian prism however, and whilst admired, their agency was subjective at best in this worldview.[8] Fortunately though, they were often admired, for their wit, charms and beauty in the love poetry of women in love written in the 6th century which became the basis for the newly emerging Beautiful Woman genre as it became known by art historians later on. Common motifs of this poetry often was the pining beauty, 'plainly elegant' plum tree (on account of its blossoms), bamboo for fragility, peonies, hand fans, incense smoke and lotus roots symbolising conjugal love, spring with willow trees, autumn with mirrors, and the ephemeral nature of cosmetic beauty which accompanied these texts, such as Du Fu's (712–770) 'Ballad of the Beauty'.[7] Other imperial beauties of the period included the plump beauty Yang Yuhuan or Guifei ( 楊玉環 | 719-756), who is considered one of the 4 great beauties of Classical China.[10] 

Yang Guifei (c.907) Liao Tomb Wall Painting on Pao Mountain

In an amend to the historical record may I lead you to the fact that women also figured prominently in Chinese myth such as the mother goddess Nuwa and Leizu, the creator deity of the mulberry tree and sericulture.[9] Others include the contemporary Empress Regent Wu Zetian. Fu Du, for example, exemplifies the beauty who wears her 'gauze robes', comparing them to the 'spring' of their youth.

Third month, third day, in the air a breath of newness: by Chang'an riverbanks the beautiful ladies crowd, rich in charms, regal in bearing, well-bred, demure, with clear sleek complexions, bone and flesh well-matched, in figured gauze robes that shine in the late spring, worked with golden peacocks, silver unicorns. - Fu Du the Uninventive [11] 

Wu Zetian (c.1700) British Library

It is said in the Tang period, it was established that both the pictorial, and mirth or ability to depict and capture personality was just as important as each other. In the tale of the General Guo Ziyi (697-781) and his daughter Ms Zhao, when asked which of 2 Tang era painters who depicted her husband the best, Zhou was chosen for his ability to depict Zhao's husband in his characters entirety.[1] The period Zhou  produced his images saw a shift towards the rigidity of the Chinese bureaucratic system, which saw the rise of innuendo and the cult of the character which peeked from under the bureaucratic curtain of modesty now and then, with a beauty in barely there silk sleeves, yet otherwise modestly dressed.[7] It was this ability to depict a 2D image, and allow its audience to empathise with it as a 3D entity in Classical Chinese art which Iwasa Matabei clearly admired in the work of Zhou Fang and was carried over into his style. 

This quality of art, was known as 'Qiyun' ( Spirit resonance | 气韵 ) and was the first of the 6 classical principles of Chinese Art.[2] Another proponent of the Chinese Zhou Beauty, is their full figure, and lavish dress which often incorporated fake flowers, birds and metal in their elaborate hairstyles and accessories, such as the floating sashes of immortals.[4] From my own research, I know that in Japan at least, Chinese chignon Tang hairstyles and dress styles were in vogue at many different periods, but had arisen once more during Matabei's era. This plump or Rubenesque silhouette, was popular during the end of the period Zhou and his contemporaries painted in.[3] Indeed it is rare to find depictions of male figures from this date in Zhou's work.[4] 

Lady with Servants (c.799) Zhou Fang

Other elements which were considered in the depiction of beauty, was the appropriate placement of figure object and depth within the space, which often also relate to a specific contextual setting or theme in a play, poem or story.[2][4][7] This was both due to the confines of the available technology at the time, and to complement the appropriate way to read and appreciate the connotations and connoisseurship of these paintings of worldly and divine beauties, who were often plumply seated in groups of 3 in handscrolls or on standing screens.[5] These depictions found in Japanese art such as Ma, or the compositionally pleasing absence of a filled space are still a mainstay of Japanese and Chinese art and aesthetics. It is said these were imported, specifically in the instance of Zhou throughout the routes of Korean traders into Japan.[6] As Classical China, particularly Tang, was considered the height of civilisation for that time in Japanese society, the modes of Tang were greatly emulated.

Qiyun Bijin

It is from this context that we see how the mind, style and elements of Iwasa Matabei came to form early Ukiyo-e. It is often thought therefore that as the court painter of the height of Tang Dynasty China, the Bijin figure of Tang China, also influential in the fashions of Japanese aesthetic and fashion, held great sway due to Zhou's artistic ventures into the perfection of that Qiyun quality. It will have been this element to embody a flat into full and rotund beautiful figure which will have drawn the eye of many, including Iwasa Matabei, which influenced many Asian ideals of Beauty in Women, given the reach and scope of Zhou's position in East Asian art, akin to that of Eadfrith (active 698-721) of Lindisfarne's carpet pages in contemporary Northumbria, albeit more in a depiction of the divine than worldly beauty, through the use of compositional space and decoration to display their influential styles of powerful beauty to the average viewer of their works, which in those days may have held more of a literal spiritual connection than in later centuries. Zhou's work therefore as depicting the more plump and fetching idealised Tang Qiyun Beauty gave the impetus for Matabei to merge 'classical' figures of Beauty together with religious proprietal imagery to create the basework for his own Qiyun Bijin as the Yamato Bijin, which fed into the Genre known today as Ukiyo-e, or rather the longer tradition of depicting Beauties in Eastern Asian art aesthetics.

Bibliography

[1] A New Life for Literati Painting in the Early Twentieth Century: Eastern Art and Modernity, a Transcultural Narrative?, Aida-Yuen Wong, 2000, Vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 297-326, Artibus Asiae Publishers 

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_principles_of_Chinese_painting

[3] Huizong's New Clothes, L.C.W. Blanchard, 2009, Vol. 36, p.113, Ars Orientalis

[4] Tao Yuanming's Sashes: Or, the Gendering of Immortality, S. E. Nelson, 1999, Vol. 29, p.15, Ars Orientalis

[5] Review for 'Examination and Identification of the Forging of Ancient Calligraphy and Painting' in Xu Bangda Review, by T. Lawton, 1987, Vol. 17, p.186, Ars Orientalis

[6] Elegant or Common? Chen Hongshou's Birthday Presentation Pictures and His Professional Status, Anne Burkus-Chasson, June 1994, Vol. 76, No. 2, p.280, The Art Bulletin 

[7] Chinese Palace-Style Poetry and the Depiction of a Palace Beauty, Ellen Johnston Laing, June 1990, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp.284-290, The Art Bulletin

[8] https://www.schwarzmanscholars.org/events-and-news/confucianism-feminism-conflict-new-understanding-necessary/

[9] For more and to amend this notion, see Chinese Myths, Anne Birrell, 2000, pp.46-50, British Musuem Press, Chapter Gender in Myth

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Guifei

[11] http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-du-fu-2.html

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Fang_(Tang_dynasty)

Bijin Series Timeline 

8th century

- Introduction of Chinese Tang Dynasty clothing (710)

- Sumizuri-e (710)

- Classical Chinese Art ; Zhou Fang (active 766-805) ; Qiyun Bijin

15th century 

- Fuzokuga Painting schools; Kano (1450-1868) and Tosa (1330-1690)

16 century 

- Nanbanjin Art (1550-1630)

- Byobu Screens (1580-1670)

 - End of Sengoku Jidai brings Stabilisation policy (1590-1615)  

17th century  

- Early Kabuki Culture (1603-1673) ; Yakusha-e or Actor Prints

- Sumptuary legislation in reaction to the wealth of the merchant classes (1604-1685) 

- Regulation of export and imports of foreign trade in silk and cotton (1615-1685)  

Iwasa Matabei (active 1617-1650) ; Yamato-e Bijin  

- Sankin-Kotai (1635-1642) creates mass Urbanisation  

- Shikomi-e (1650-1670) and Kakemono-e which promote Androgynous Beauties; Iwasa Katsushige (active 1650-1673) [Coming Soon] 

- Mass Urbanisation instigates the rise of Chonin Cottage Industry Printing (from 1660) ; rise of the Kabunakama Guilds and decline of the Samurai

- Kanazoshi Books (1660-1700); Koshokubon Genre (1659?-1661)

- Shunga (1660-1722); Abuna-e

Kanbun Master/School (active during 1661-1673) ; Maiko Bijin 

- Hinagata Bon (1666 - 1850)

Yoshida Hanbei (active 1664-1689) ; Toned-Down Bijin

- Asobi/Suijin Dress Manuals (1660-1700)

- Ukiyo-e Art (1670-1900)

Hishikawa Moronobu (active 1672-1694) ; Wakashu Bijin

- The transit point from Kosode to modern Kimono (1680); Furisode, Wider Obi 

- The Genroku Osaka Bijin (1680 - 1700) ; Yuezen Hiinakata

Sugimura Jihei (active 1681-1703) ; Technicolour Bijin 

Miyazaki Yuzen (active 1688-1736) [Coming Soon]

Torii Kiyonobu (active 1698 - 1729) [Coming Soon]

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