Two Finished Panels of Shirakage Shibori: White Shadow Work

early twentieth century
47" x 25 1/2", 119.5 cm x 65 cm

This is a cloth hand stitched from two panels 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 shows a vertically-oriented zigzags that are punctuated with small pools of indigo dye.

The cloth is finished on both its short ends which indicates it was made for some reason, possible for a sleeping mat. The cloth, too, was more than likely recycled from a yukata or an unlined, casual kimono.

This two panel cloth shows some small flecks of stains throughout the field of undyed, white as well as small snags or tiny holes, shown. 

Still, this is a generous amount of a desirable type of old shibori from Arimatsu, Japan's unofficial shibori "capital."

Recommended.