A Rustic Length of Sakiori with a Hemp Warp: Work Coat Panel

early to mid twentieth century
68" x 12", 173 cm x 30.5 cm

This wonderfully rustic, thickly woven length of cloth is hand woven from a hemp or ramie warp and a cotton rag weft. In Japan rag weaving is called sakiori.

This dark-toned sakiori piece is heavy in weight and was meant to be 1/2 of a work coat.

This is known because of the area of woven bast fiber in the middle of the length: this is where the garment would have been folded at the shoulder/neck area. Often this area of bast weaving would be cut into in order to create a neat fold or to help fashion a type of collar used on work garments.

When assessing sakiori for quality it is always a good thing when a bast warp is present as is the case here.

Originally sakiori was woven by people without access to cotton cloth so they would buy cotton scraps, clean them, cut them and weave them. Because cotton articles were not available to them--including cotton yarn or thread--the warp would be set with the yarn they had available to them which was bast.

Look carefully at the detail photos here to see the variety of dark toned rags used to weave this length. It is unused as it never made its way to become the coat it was intended to be.

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