A Randomly Over-Dyed Katazome Length: Overlaid Patterns

early to mid twentieth century
52" x 13", 132 cm x 33 cm

This is an interestingly detailed length of indigo dyed cotton katazome cloth. Its primarily pattern is that of large-scale stylized chrysanthemums depicted in two ways.

However under this, or over this, there are ghost images which seem to be from another dyeing project entirely, more than likely the images are from some kind of banner.

It is unclear if the secondary images were placed on the cloth first and the chrysanthemum images were dyed on top, but even so it is an interesting mash-up of motifs, scale and image.

As can be seen the indigo has been scuffed and faded a bit, but the katazome image is still very strong while the colored and black images are fainter and provide a visual counterpoint.

A curious length of old folk textile.